NATURE NEAR LONDON

BY

RICHARD JEFFERIES

AUTHOR OF
"THE GAMEKKEPER AT HOME," "WILD LJPE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY,"

"THE AMATEUR POACHER," "GREENE FERNE FARM,"
HODGE AND HIS MASTERS," "ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE," "WOOD MAGIC,

" BEVIS "

Honfcon
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1883

[All rights reserved\

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWliS AND SONcJ, LIMITED, LONDON AND BKCCLKS,

io I .
A/4

PREFACE.

IT is usually supposed to be necessary to go far into
the country to find wild birds and animals in suffi-
cient numbers to be pleasantly studied. Such was
certainly my own impression till circumstances led
me, for the convenience of access to London, to
reside for awhile about twelve miles from town.
There my preconceived views on the subject were
quite overthrown by the presence of as much bird-
life as I had been accustomed to in distant fields
and woods.

First, as the spring began, came crowds of chiff-
chaffs and willow wrens filling the furze with cease-
less, flutterings. Presently a nightingale sang in a
hawthorn bush only just on the other side of the
road. One morning, on looking out of window, there
was a hen pheasant in the furze almost underneath.
Babbits often came out into the spaces of sward
between the bushes,

The furze itself became a broad surface of gold,
beautiful to look down upon, with islands of tenderest
birch green interspersed, and willows in which the
sedge-reedling chattered. They used to say in the

M294709

ir PEEFACE.

country that cuckoos were getting scarce, but here
the notes of the cuckoo echoed all day long, and the
birds often flew over the house. Doves cooed, black-
birds whistled, thrushes sang, jays called, wood-
pigeons uttered the old familiar notes in the little
copse hard by. Even a heron went over now and
then, and in the evening from the window I could
hear .partridges calling each other to roost.

Along the roads and lanes the quantity and variety
of life in the hedges was really astonishing. Mag-
pies, jays, woodpeckers — both green and pied — kestrels
hovering overhead, sparrow-hawks darting over gate-
ways, hares by the clover, weasels on the mounds,
stoats at the edge of the corn. I missed but two
birds, the corncrake and the grasshopper lark, and
found these another season. Two squirrels one day
ran along the palings and up into a guelder-rose
tree in the garden. As for the finches and sparrows
their number was past calculation. There was
material for many years' observation, and finding
myself so unexpectedly in the midst of these things,
I was led to make the following sketches, which were
published in The Standard, and are now reprinted by
permission.

The question may be asked : Why have you not
indicated in every case the precise locality where you
were so pleased ? Why not mention the exact hedge,
the particular meadow? Because no two persons
look at the same thing with the same eyes. To me
this spot may be attractive, to you another ; a third
thinks yonder gnarled oak the most artistic. Nor
could I guarantee that every one should see the same

PREFACE. j

things under the same conditions of season, time or
weather. How could I arrange for you next autumn
to see the sprays of the horse-chestnut, scarlet from
frost, reflected in the dark water of the brook?
There might not be any frost till all the leaves had
dropped. How could I contrive that the cuckoos
should circle round the copse, the sunlight glint upon
the stream, the warm sweet wind come breathing oyer
the young corn just when I should wish you to feel
it ? Every one must find their own locality. I find
a favourite wild-flower here, and the spot is dear to
.•tie ; you find yours yonder. Neither painter nor
writer can show the spectator their originals. It
would be very easy, too, to pass any of these places
and see nothing, or but little. Birds are wayward,
wild creatures uncertain. The tree crowded with
wood-pigeons one minute is empty the next. To
traverse the paths day by day, and week by week ;
to keep an eye ever on the fields from year's end to
year's end, is the one only method of knowing what
really is in, or comes to them. That the sitting
gambler sweeps the board is true of these matters.
The richest locality may be apparently devoid of
interest just at the juncture of a chance visit.

Though my preconceived ideas were overthrown
by the presence of so much that was beautiful and
interesting close to London, yet in course of time
I came to understand what was at first a dim sense
of something wanting. In the shadiest lane, in the
still pinewoods, on the hills of purple heath, after
brief contemplation there arose a restlessness, a
feeling that it was essential to be moving. In no

Ti PREFACE.

grassy mead was there a nook where I could stretch
myself in slumberous ease and watch the swallows ever
wheeling, wheeling in the sky. This was the unseen
influence of mighty London. The strong life of the
vast city magnetized me, and I felt it under the calm
oaks. The something wanting in the fields was the
absolute quiet, peace, and rest which dwells in the
meadows and under the trees and on the hilltops
in the country. Under its power the mind gradually
yields itself to the green earth, the wind among the
trees, the song of birds, and comes to have an under-
standing with them all. For this it is still necessary
to seek the far-away glades and hollow coombes, or to
sit alone beside the sea. That such a sense of quiet
might not be lacking I have added a chapter or so on
those lovely downs that overlook the south coast.

E. J.

CONTENTS

PACK

WOODLANDS 1

FOOTPATHS 14

FLOCKS OF BIRDS 28

NIGHTINGALE EOAD 40

A BROOK 55

A LONDON TROUT 68

A BARN 80

WHEATFIELDS 92

THE CROWS 104

HEATHLANDS 116

THE RIVER 127

NUTTY AUTUMN 142

ROUND A LONDON COPSE 152

MAGPIE FIELDS 168

HERBS 185

TREES ABOUT TOWN 196

TO BRIGHTON 207

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD 220

THE BREEZE ON BE ACHY HEAD ... 232

NATURE NEAR LONDON.

WOODLANDS.

THE tiny white petals of the barren strawberry open
under the April sunshine which, as yet unchecked by
crowded foliage above, can reach the moist banks
under the trees. It is then that the first stroll of the
year should be taken in Clay gate-lane. The slender
runners of the strawberries trail over the mounds
among the moss, some of the flowers but just above
the black and brown leaves of last year which fill the
shallow ditch. These will presently be hidden under
the grass which is pushing up long blades, and bend-
ing over like a plume.

Crimson stalks and leaves of herb Kobert stretch
across the little cavities of the mound ; lower, and
rising almost from the water of the ditch, the wild
parsnip spreads its broad fan. Slanting among the
underwood, against which it leans, the dry white
" gix " (cow-parsnip) of last year has rotted from its
root, and is only upheld by branches.

Yellowish green cup-like leaves are forming upon
the brown and drooping heads of the spurge, which,

2 NATVEE NEAR LONDON.

sheltered by the bushes, has endured the winter's
frosts. The lads pull them off, and break the stems,
to watch the white "milk" well up, the whole plant
being full of acrid juice. Whorls of woodruff and
grass-like leaves of stitchwort are rising; the latter
holds but feebly to the earth, and even in snatching
the flower the roots sometimes give way and the plant
is lifted with it.

Upon either hand the mounds are so broad that
they in places resemble covers rather than hedges,
thickly grown with bramble and briar, hazel and haw-
thorn, above which the straight trunks of young oaks
and Spanish chestnuts stand in crowded but careless
ranks. The leaves which dropped in the preceding
autumn from these trees still lie on the ground under
the bushes, dry and brittle, and the blackbirds search-
ing about among them cause as much rustling as if
some animal were routing about.

As the month progresses these wide mounds become
completely green, hawthorn and bramble, briar and
hazel put forth their leaves, and the eye can no longer
see into the recesses. But above, the oaks and edible
chestnuts are still dark and leafless, almost black by
contrast with the vivid green beneath them. Upon
their bare boughs the birds are easily seen, but the
moment they descend among the bushes are difficult
to find. Chaffinches call and challenge continually —
these trees are their favourite resort — and yellowham-
mers flit along the underwood.

Behind the broad hedge are the ploughed fields they
love, alternating with meadows down whose hedges
again a stream of birds is always flowing to the lane.

WOODLANDS. 3

Bright as are the colours of the yellowhammer, 'when
he alights among the brown clods of the ploughed
field he is barely visible, for brown conceals like
vapour. A white butterfly comes fluttering along
the lane, and as it passes under a tree a chaffinch
swoops down and snaps at it, but rises again with-
out doing apparent injury, for the butterfly continues
its flight.

From an oak overhead comes the sweet slender
voice of a linnet, the sunshine falling on his rosy
breast. The gateways show the thickness of the
hedge, as an embrasure shows the thickness of a wall.
One gives entrance to an arable field which has been
recently rolled, and along the gentle rise of a "land "
a, cock-pheasant walks, so near that the ring about
his neck is visible. Presently, becoming conscious
that he is observed, he goes down into a furrow, and
is then hidden.

The next gateway, equally deep- set between the
bushes, opens on a pasture, where the docks of last
year still cumber the ground, and bunches of rough
grass and rushes are scattered here and there. A
partridge separated from his mate is calling across
the field, and comes running over the short sward as
his companion answers. With his neck held high
and upright, stretched to see around, he looks larger
than would be supposed, as he runs swiftly, threading
his way through the tufts, the docks, and the rushes.
But suddenly noticing that the gateway is not clear,
he crouches, and is concealed by the grass.

Some distance further there is a stile, sitting upon
which the view ranges over two adjacent meadows.

4 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

They are bounded by a copse of ash stoles and young
oak trees, and the lesser of the meads is full of rush
bunches and dotted with green ant-hills. Among
these, just beyond gunshot, two rabbits are feeding ;
pausing and nibbling till they have eaten the tenderest
blades, and then leisurely hopping a yard or so to
another spot. Later on in the summer this little
meadow which divides the lane from the copse is alive
with rabbits.

Along the hedge the brake fern has then grown, in
the corner by the copse there is a beautiful mass of it,
and several detached bunches away from the hedge
among the ant-hills. From out of the fern, which is
a favourite retreat with them, rabbits are continually
coming, feeding awhile, darting after each other, and
back again to cover. To-day there are but three, and
they do not venture far from their buries.

Watching these, a green woodpecker cries in the
copse, and immediately afterwards flies across the
mead, and away to another plantation. Occasionally
the spotted woodpecker may be seen here, a little bird
which, in the height of summer, is lost among the
foliage, but in spring and winter can be observed
tapping at the branches of the trees.

I think I have seen more spotted woodpeckers near
London than in far distant and nominally wilder
districts. This lane, for some two miles, is lined on
each side with trees, and, besides this particular copse,
there are several others close by ; indeed, stretch-
ing across the country to another road, there is a
succession of copses, with meadows between. Birds
which love trees are naturally seen flitting to and fro

WOODLANDS. $

In the lane ; the trees are at present young, but as
they grow older, and decay they will be still more
resorted to.

Jays screech in the trees of the lane almost all the
year round, though more frequently in spring and
autumn, but I rarely walked here without seeing or
hearing one. Beyond the stile, the lane descends into
a hollow, and is bordered by a small furze common,
where, under shelter of the hollow brambles and
beneath the golden bloom of the furze, the pale
anemones flower.

When the June roses open their petals on the
briars, and the scent of new-mown hay is wafted over
the hedge from the meadows, the lane seems to wind
through a continuous wood. The oaks and chestnuts,
though too young to form a complete arch, cross their
green branches, and cast a delicious shadow. For it
is in the shadow that we enjoy the summer, looking
forth from the gateway upon the mowing grass where
the glowing sun pours down his fiercest beams.

Tall bennets and red sorrel rise above the grass,
white ox-eye daisies chequer it below; the distant
hedge quivers as the air, set in motion by the intense
heat, runs along. The sweet murmuring coo of the
turtle dove comes from the copse, and the rich notes
of the blackbird -from the oak into which he has
mounted to deliver them.

Slight movements in the hawthorn, or in the
depths of the tall hedge grasses, movements too quick
for the glance to catch their cause, are where some
tiny bird is passing from spray to spray. It may be
a white-throat "creeping among the nettles after his

6 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

wont, or a wren. The spot where he was but a
second since may be traced by the trembling of the
leaves, but the keenest attention may fail to detect
where he is now. That slight motion in the hedge,
however, conveys an impression of something living
everywhere within.

There are birds in the oaks overhead whose voice
is audible though they are themselves unseen. From
out of the mowing grass, finches rise and fly to the
hedge; from the hedge again others fly out, and,
descending into the grass, are concealed as in a forest.
A thrush travelling along the hedgerow just outside
goes by the gateway within a yard. Bees come upon
the light wind, gliding with it, but with their bodies
aslant across the line of current. Butterflies flutter
over the mowing grass, hardly clearing the bennets.
Many-coloured insects creep up the sorrel stems and
take wing from the summit.

Everything gives forth a sound of life. The twitter-
ing of swallows from above, the song of greenfinches
in the trees, the rustle of hawthorn sprays moving
under the weight of tiny creatures, the buzz upon the
breeze; the very flutter of the butterflies' wings,
noiseless as it is, and the wavy movement of the
heated air across the field cause a sense of motion
and of music.

The leaves are enlarging, and the sap rising, and
the hard trunks of the trees swelling with its flow ;
the grass blades pushing upwards; the seeds com-
pleting their shape ; the tinted petals uncurling.
Dreamily listening, leaning on the gate, all these are
audible to the inner senses, while the ear follows the

WOODLANDS. 7

midsummer hum, now sinking, now sonorously in-
creasing over the oaks. An effulgence fills the
southern boughs, which the eye cannot sustain, but
which it knows is there.

The sun at his meridian pours forth his light, for-
getting, in all the inspiration of his strength and
glory, that without an altar-screen of green his love
must scorch. Joy in life; joy in life. The ears
listen, and want more : the eyes are gratified with
gazing, and desire yet further ; the nostrils are filled
with the sweet odours of flower and sap. The touch,
too, has its pleasures, dallying with leaf and flower.
Can you not almost grasp the odour-laden air and
hold it in the hollow of the hand ?

Leaving the spot at last, and turning again into
the lane, the shadows dance upon the white dust
under the feet, irregularly circular spots of light
surrounded with umbra shift with the shifting
branches. By the wayside lie rings of .dandelion
stalks carelessly cast down by the child who made
them, and tufts of delicate grasses gathered for their
beauty but now sprinkled with dust. Wisps of hay
hang from the lower boughs of the oaks where they
brushed against the passing load.

After a time, when the corn is ripening, the herb
betony flowers on the mounds under the oaks. Fol-
lowing the lane down the hill and across the small
furze common at the bottom, the marks of traffic fade
away, the dust ceases, and is succeeded by sward.
The hedgerows on either side are here higher than
ever, and are thickly fringed with bramble bushes,
which sometimes encroach on the waggon ruts in the

8 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

middle, and are covered with flowers, and red, and
green, and ripe blackberries together.

Green rushes line the way, and green dragon flies
dart above them. Thistledown is pouting forth from
the swollen tops of thistles crowded with seed. In a
gateway the turf has been worn away by waggon
wheels and the hoofs of cart horses, and the dry
heat has pulverised the crumbling ruts. Three hen
pheasants and a covey of partridges that have been
dusting themselves here move away without much
haste at the approach of footsteps — the pheasants
into the thickets, and the partridges through the gate-
way. The shallow holes in which they were sitting
can be traced on the dust, and there are a few small
feathers lying about.

A barley field is within the gate ; the mowers have
just begun to cut it on the opposite side. Next to it
is a wheat field ; the wheat has been cut and stands
in shocks. From the stubble by the nearest shock
two turtle doves rise, alarmed, and swiftly fly towards
a wood which bounds the field. This wood, indeed,
upon looking again, clearly bounds not this field only,
but the second and the third, and so far as the eye
can see over the low hedges of the corn, the trees
continue. The green lane as it enters the wood, be-
comes wilder and rougher at every step, widening,
too, considerably.

In the centre the wheels of timber carriages, heavily
laden with trunks of trees which were dragged through
by straining teams in the rainy days of spring, have
left vast ruts, showing that they must have sunk to
the axle in the soft clay. These then filled with

WOODLANDS, 9

water, and on the water duck- weed grew, and aquatic
grasses at the sides. Summer heats have evaporated
the water, leaving the weeds and grasses prone upon
the still moist earth.

Bushes have sprung up and mark the line of the
ruts, and willow stoles, bramble bushes, and thorns
growing at the side, make, as it were, a third hedge
in the middle of the lane. The best path is by the
wood itself, but even there occasional leaps are
necessary over pools of dark water full of vegetation.
These alternate with places where the ground, being
higher, yawns with wide cracks crumbling at the
edge, the heat causing the clay to split and open. In
winter it must be an impassable quagmire ; now it is
dry and arid.

Kising out of this lowlying spot the lane again
becomes green and pleasant, and is crossed by
another. At the meeting of these four ways some
boughs hang over a green bank where I have often
rested. In front the lane is barred by a gate, but
beyond the gate it still continues its straight course
into the wood. To the left the track, crossing at
right angles, also proceeds into the wrood, but it is so
overhung with trees and blocked by bushes that its
course after the first hundred yards or so cannot be
traced.

To the right the track — a little wider and clearer of
bushes — extends through wood, and as it is straight
and rises up a gentle slope, the eye can travel along
it half a mile. There is nothing but wood around.
This track to the right appears the most used, and
has some ruts in the centre. The sward each side is

10 NATUBE NEAR LONDON.

concealed by endless thistles, on* the point of sending
forth clouds of thistledown, and to which presently
the goldfinches will be attracted.

Occasionally a movement among the thistles betrays
the presence of a rabbit ; only occasionally, for though
the banks are drilled with buries, the lane is too hot
for them at midday. Particles of rabbits' fur lie on
the ground, and their runs are visible in every direc-
tion. But there are no birds. A solitary robin,
indeed, perches on an ash branch opposite, and re-
gards me thoughtfully. It is impossible to go any-
where in the open air without a robin ; they are the
very spies of the woods. But there are no thrushes.,
no blackbirds, finches, nor even sparrows.

In August it is true most birds cease to sing, but
sitting thus partially hidden and quiet, if there were
any about something would be heard of them. There
would be a rustling, a thrush would fly across the
lane, a blackbird would appear by the gateway yonder
in the shadow which he loves, a finch would settle in
the oaks. None of these incidents occur; none of the
lesser signs of life in the foliage, the tremulous spray,
the tap of a bill cleaned by striking first one side and
then the other against a bough, the rustle of a wing —
nothing.

There are woods, woods, woods; but no birds.
Yonder a drive goes straight into the ashpoles, it is
green above and green below, but a long watch will
reveal nothing living. The dry mounds must be full
of rabbits, there must be pheasants somewhere ; but
nothing visible. Once only a whistling sound in the
air directs the glance upwards, it is a wood-pigeon

WOODLANDS. 11

flying at full speed. There are no bees, for there are
no flowers. There are no butterflies. The black flies
are not numerous, and rarely require a fanning from
the ash spray carried to drive them off.

Two large dragon-flies rush up and down, and
cross the lane, and rising suddenly almost to the
tops of the oaks swoop down again in bold sweeping
curves. The broad, deep ditch between the lane and
the mound of the wood is dry, but there are no short
rustling sounds of mice.

The only sound is the continuous singing of the
grasshoppers, and the peculiar snapping noise they
make as they spring, leaping along the sward. The
fierce sun of the ripe wheat pours down a fiery glow
scarcely to be borne except under the boughs; the
hazel leaves already have lost their green, the tips of
the rushes are shrivelling, the grass becoming brown ;
it is a scorched and parched desert of wood.

The finches have gone forth in troops to the stubble
where the wheat has been cut, and where they can
revel on the seeds of the weeds now ripe. Thrushes
and blackbirds have gone to the streams, to splash
and bathe, and to the mown meadows, where in the
short aftermath they can find their food. There they
will look out on the shady side of the hedge as the
sun declines, six or eight perhaps of them along the
same hedge, but all in the shadow, where the dew
forms first as the evening falls, where the grass feels
cool and moist, while still on the sunny side it is
warm and dry.

The bees are busy on the heaths and along the hill-
tops, where there are still flowers and honey, and the

12 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

butterflies are with them. So the woods are silent,
still, and deserted, save by a stray rabbit among the
thistles, and the grasshoppers ceaselessly leaping in
the grass.

Keturning presently to the gateway just outside the
wood, where upon first coming the pheasants and
partridges were dusting themselves, a waggon is now
passing among the corn and is being laden with the
sheaves. But afar off, across the broad field and
under the wood, it seems somehow only a part of the
silence and the solitude. The men with it move
about the stubble, calmly toiling ; the horses, having
drawn it a little way, become motionless, reposing as
they stand, every line of their large limbs expressing
delight in physical ease and idleness.

Perhaps the heat has made the men silent, for
scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the still-
ness it must be heard, though they are at some
distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy
harvest wrork, do not creak. Save an occasional
monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to
stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound.
It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of
the heat, but in some way the waggon and its rising
load, the men and the horses, have an unreality of
appearance.

The yellow wheat and stubble, the dull yellow of
the waggon, toned down by years of weather, the
green woods near at hand, darkening in the distance
and slowly changing to blue, the cloudless sky, the
heat-suffused atmosphere, in which things seem to
float rather than to grow or stand, the shadowless

WOODLANDS. 1$

field, all are there, and yet are not there, but far
away and vision-like. The waggon, at last laden,
travels away, and seems rather to disappear of itself
than to be hidden by the trees. It is an effort to
awake and move from the spot.

H NATURE NEAR LONDON.

FOOTPATHS.

" ALWAYS get over a stile," is the one rule that should
ever be borne in mind by those who wish to see the
land as it really is — that is to say, never omit to
explore a footpath, for never was there a footpath yet
which did not pass something of interest.

In the meadows, everything comes pressing lovingly
up to the path. The small-leaved clover can scarce
be driven back by frequent footsteps from endeavour-
ing to cover the bare earth of the centre. Tall
buttercups, round whose stalks the cattle have care-
fully grazed, stand in ranks; strong ox-eye daisies,
with broad white disks and torn leaves, form with the
grass the tricolour of the pasture — white, green, and
gold.

When the path enters the mowing-grass, ripe for
the scythe, the simplicity of these cardinal hues is
lost in the multitude of shades and the addition of
other colours. The surface of mowing-grass is indeed
made up of so many tints that at the first glance it is
confusing ; and hence, perhaps, it is that hardly ever
has an artist succeeded in getting the effect upon
canvas. Of the million blades of grass no two are of
the same shade.

WOODLANDS. 15

Pluck a handful and spread them out side by side
and this is at once evident. Nor is any single blade
the same shade all the way up. There may be a
faint yellow towards the root, a full green about the
middle, at the tip perhaps the hot sun has scorched
it, and there is a trace of brown. The older grass,
which comes up earliest, is distinctly different in tint
from that which has but just reached its greatest
height, and in which the sap has not yet stood still.

Under all there is the new grass, short, sweet, and
verdant, springing up fresh between the old, and
giving a tone to the rest as you look down into the
bunches. Some blades are nearly grey, some the
palest green, and among them others, torn from
the roots perhaps by rooks searching for grubs, are
quite white. The very track of a rook through the
grass leaves a different shade each side, as the blades
are bent or trampled down.

The stalks of the bennets vary, some green, some
yellowish, some brown, some approaching whiteness,
according to age and the condition of the sap. Their
tops, too, are never the same, whether the pollen
clings to the surface or whether it has gone. Here
the green is almost lost in red, or quite ; here the
grass has a soft, velvety look ; yonder it is hard and
wiry, and again graceful and drooping. Here there are
bunches so rankly verdant that no flower is visible and
no other tint but dark green ; here it is thin and short,
and the flowers, and almost the turf itself, can be seen ;
then there is an array of bennets (stalks which bear
the grass-seed) with scarcely any grass proper.

Every variety of grass — and they are many — has

16 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

its own colour, and every blade of every variety has
its individual variations of that colour. The rain
falls, and there is a darker tint at large upon the
field, fresh but darker ; the sun shines and at first
the hue is lighter, but presently if the heat last a
brown comes. The wind blows, and immediately as
the waves of grass roll across the meadow a paler tint
follows it.

A clouded sky dulls the herbage, a cloudless heaven
brightens it, so that the grass almost reflects the
firmament like water. At sunset the rosy rays bring
out every tint of red or purple. At noonday, watch as
alternate shadow and sunshine come one after the
other as the clouds are wafted over. By moonlight
perhaps the white ox-eyed daisies show the most.
But never will you find the mowing grass in the same
field looking twice alike.

Come again the day after to-morrow only, and
there is a change ; some of the grass is riper, some
is thicker, with further blades which have pushed up,
some browner. Cold northern winds cause it to wear
a dry, withered aspect ; under warm showers it visibly
opens itself ; in a hurricane it tosses itself wildly to
and fro ; it laughs under the sunshine.

There are thick bunches by the footpath, which
hang over and brush the feet. While approaching
there seems nothing there except grass, but in the
act of passing, and thus looking straight down into
them, there are blue eyes at the bottom gazing up.
These specks of blue sky hidden in the grass tempt
the hand to gather them, but then you cannot gather
the whole field.

FOOTPATHS. 17

Behind the bunches where the grass is thinner are
the heads of purple clover ; pluck one of these,
and while meditating draw forth petal after petal and
imbibe the honey with the lips till nothing remains but
the green framework, like stolen jewellery from which
the gems have been taken. Torn pink ragged robins
through whose petals a comb seems to have been re-
morselessly dragged, blue scabious, red knapweeds,
yellow rattles, yellow vetchings by the hedge, white
flowering parsley, white campions, yellow tormentil,
golden buttercups, white cuckoo-flowers, dandelions,
yarrow, and so on, all carelessly sown broadcast
without order or method, just as negligently as they
are named here, first remembered, first mentioned,
and many forgotten.

Highest and coarsest of texture, the red-tipped
sorrel — a crumbling red — so thick and plentiful that
at sunset the whole mead becomes reddened. If these
were in any way set in order or design, howsoever
entangled, the eye might, as it were, get at them for
reproduction. But just where there should be flowers
there are none, whilst in odd places where there are
none required there are plenty.

In hollows, out of sight till stumbled on, is a mass
of colour; on the higher foreground only a dull
brownish green. Walk all round the meadow, and
still no vantage point can be found where the herbage
groups itself, whence a scheme of colour is perceivable.
There is no " artistic " arrangement anywhere.

So, too, with the colours — of the shades of green
something has already been said — and here are
bright blues and bright greens, yellows and pinks,

c

18 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

positive discords and absolute antagonisms of tint
side by side, yet without jarring the eye. Green
all round, the trees and hedges ; blue overhead, the
sky ; purple and gold westward, where the sun sinks.
No part of this grass can be represented by a blur or
broad streak of colour, for it is not made up of broad
streaks. It is composed of innumerable items of grass
blade and flower, each in itself coloured and different
from its neighbour. Not one of these must be slurred
over if you wish to get the same effect.

Then there are drifting specks of colour which
cannot be fixed. Butterflies, white, parti-coloured,
brown, and spotted, and light blue flutter along beside
the footpath ; two white ones wheel about each other,
rising higher at every turn till they are lost and no
more to be distinguished against a shining white cloud.
Large dark humble bees roam slowly, and honey bees
with more decided flight. Glistening beetles, green
and gold, run across the bare earth of the path,
coming from one crack in the dry ground and dis-
appearing in the (to them) mighty chasm of another.

Tiny green "hoppers" — odd creatures shaped some-
thing like the fancy frogs of children's story-books —
alight upon it after a spring, and pausing a second,
with another toss themselves as high as the highest
bennet (veritable elm-trees by comparison), to fall
anywhere out of sight in the grass. Keddish ants
hurry over. Time is money; and their business
brooks no delay.

Bee-like flies of many stripes and parti-coloured
robes face you, suspended in the air with wings
vibrating so swiftly as to be unseen ; then suddenly

FOOTPATHS. 19

jerk themselves a few yards, to recommence hovering.
A greenfinch rises with a yellow gleam and a sweet
note from the grass, and is off with something for his
brood, or a starling, solitary now, for his mate is in
the nest, startled from his questing, goes straight
away.

Dark starlings, greenfinch, gilded fly, glistening
beetle, blue butterfly, humble bee with scarf about his
thick waist, add their moving dots of colour to the
surface. There is no design, no balance, nothing
like a pattern perfect on the right-hand side, and
exactly equal on the left-hand. Even trees which
have some semblance of balance in form are not
really so, and as you walk round them so their outline
changes.

Now the path approaches a stile set deep in thorns
and brambles, and hardly to be gained for curved
hooks and prickles. But on the briars June roses
bloom, arches of flowers over nettles, burdock, and
rushes in the ditch beneath. Sweet roses — buds yet
unrolled, white and conical; roses half open and
pink tinted; roses widespread, the petals curling
backwards on the hedge, abandoning their beauty to
the sun. In the pasture over the stile a roan cow
feeds unmoved, calmly content, gathering the grass
with rough tongue. It is not only what you actually
see along the path, but what you remember to have
seen, that gives it its beauty.

From hence the path skirts the hedge enclosing a
copse, part of which had been cut in the winter, so
that a few weeks since in spring the bluebells could
be seen, instead of being concealed by the ash branches

20 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

and the woodbine. Among them grew one with white
hells, like a lily, solitary in the midst of the azure
throng. A " drive," or green lane passing between
the ash-stoles, went into the copse, with tufts of
tussocky grass on either side and rush bunches, till
further away the overhanging branches, where the
poles were uncut, hid its course.

Already the grass has hidden the ruts left by the
timber carriages — the last came by on May-day with
ribbons of orange, red, and blue on the horses' heads
for honour of the day. Another, which went past in
the wintry weeks of the early year, was drawn by a
team wearing the ancient harness with bells under
high hoods, or belfries, bells well attuned, too, and not
far inferior to those rung by handbell men. The beat
of the three horses' hoofs sounds like the drum that
marks time to the chime upon their backs. Seldom,
even in the far away country, can that pleasant chime
be heard.

But now the timber is all gone, the ruts are hidden,
and the tall spruce firs, whose graceful branches were
then almost yellow with young needles on the tip, are
now clothed in fresh green. On the bank there is a
flower which is often gathered for the forget-me-not,
and i§ not unlike it at the first glance ; but if the two
"be placed side by side, this, the scorpion grass, is but
a pale imitation of the true plant ; its petals vary in
colour and are often dull, and it has not the yellow
central spot. Yet it is not unfrequently sold in pots in
the shops as for-getme-not. It flowers on the bank,
liigh above the water of the ditch.

The true forget-me-not can hardly be seen in pass-

FOOTPATHS. 21

ing, so much does it nestle under flags and behind
sedges, and it is not easy to gather because it flowers
on the very verge of the running stream. The shore
is bordered with matted vegetation, aquatic grass, and
flags and weeds, and outside these, where its leaves
are washed and purified by the clear stream, its blue
petals open. Be cautious, therefore, in reaching for
the forget-me-not, lest the bank be treacherous.

It was near this copse that in early spring I stayed
to gather some white sweet violets, for the true wild
violet is very nearly white. I stood close to a hedger
and ditcher, who, standing on a board, was cleaning
out the mud that the water might run freely. He
went on with his work, taking not the least notice of
an idler, but intent upon his labour, as a good and
true man should be. But when I spoke to him he
answered me in clear, well chosen language, well
pronounced, " in good set terms.'*

No slurring of consonants and broadening of vowels,
no involved and backward construction depending on
the listener's previous knowledge for comprehension,
no half sentences indicating rather than explaining,
but correct sentences. With his shoes almost covered
by the muddy water, his hands black and grimy, his
hrown face splashed with mud, leaning on his shovel
he stood and talked from the deep ditch, not much
more than head and shoulders visible above it. It
seemed a voice from the very earth, speaking of
education, change, and possibilities.

The copse is now filling up with undergrowth ; the
brambles are spreading, the briars extending, masses
of nettles, and thistles like saplings in size and

22 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

height, crowding the spaces between the ash-stoles,
By the banks great cow-parsnips or " gix " have
opened their broad heads of white flowers ; teazles
have lifted themselves into view, every opening is
occupied. There is a scent of elder flowers, the
meadow-sweet is pushing up, and will soon be out,
and an odour of new-mown hay floats on the
breeze.

From the oak green caterpillars slide down threads
of their own making to the bushes below, but they are
running terrible risk. For a pair of white-throats
or "nettle-creepers " are on the watch, and seize the
green creeping things crossways in their beaks. Then
they perch on a branch three or four yards only from
where I stand, silent and motionless, and glance first
at me and next at a bush of bramble which projects
out to the edge of the footpath. So long as my eyes
are turned aside, or half closed, the bird perches on
the branch, gaining confidence every moment. The
instant I open my eyes, or move them, or glance
towards him, without either movement of head, hand,
or foot, he is off to the oak.

His tiny eyes are intent on mine ; the moment he
catches my glance he retires. But in half a minute
affection brings him back, still with the caterpillar in
his beak, to the same branch. Whilst I have patience
to look the other way there he stays, but again a
glance sends him away. This is repeated four or five
times, till, finally, convinced that I mean no harm,
and yet timorous and fearful of betrayal even in the
act, he dives down into the bramble bush.

After a brief interval he reappears on the other side

100TPATHS. 23

of it, having travelled through and left his prey with
his brood in the nest there. Assured by his success
his mate follows now, and once having done it, they
continue to bring caterpillars, apparently as fast as
they can pass between the trees and the bush. They
always enter the bush, which is scarcely two yards
from me, on one side, pass through in the same
direction, and emerge on the other side, having thus
regular places of entrance and exit.

As I stand watching these birds a flock of rooks
goes over, they have left the nesting trees, and fly
together again. Perhaps this custom of nesting-
together in adjacent trees and using the same one
year after year is not so free from cares and jealousies
as the solitary plan of the little white-throats here.
Last March I was standing near a rookery, noting the
contention and quarrelling, the downright tyranny,
and brigandage which is carried on there. The very
sound of the cawing, sharp and angry, conveys the
impression of hate and envy.

Two rooks in succession flew to a nest the owners
of which were absent, and deliberately picked a great
part of it to pieces, taking the twigs for their own use.
Unless the rook, therefore, be ever in his castle his
labour is torn down, and, as with men in the fierce
struggle for wealth, the meanest advantages are seized
on. So strong is the rook's bill that he tears living
twigs of some size with it from the bough. The
white-throats were without such envy and contention.

From hence the footpath, leaving the copse,
descends into a hollow, with a streamlet flowing
through a little meadow, barely an acre, with a pollard

24: NATURE NEAR LONDON.

oak in the centre, the rising ground on two sides
shutting out all but the sky, and on the third another
wood. Such a dreamy hollow might be painted for
a glade in the Forest of Arden, and there on the sward
and leaning against the ancient oak one might read
the play through without being disturbed by a single
passer by. A few steps further and the stile opens on
a road.

There the teams travel with rows of brazen spangles
down their necks, some with a wheatsheaf for design,
some with a swan. The road itself, if you follow it,
dips into a valley where the horses must splash through
the water of a brook spread out some fifteen or twenty
yards wide; for, after the primitive Surrey fashion,
there is no bridge for waggons. A narrow wooden
structure bears foot-passengers ; you cannot but linger
half across and look down into its clear stream. Up
the current where it issues from the fields and
falls over a slight obstacle the sunlight plays and
glances.

A great hawthorn bush grows on the bank ; in
spring, white with May ; in autumn, red with haws or
peggles. To the shallow shore of the brook, where it
washes the flints and moistens the dust, the hoifee-
martins come for mortar. A constant succession of
birds arrive all day long to drink at the clear stream,
often alighting on the fragments of chalk and flint
which stand in the water, and are to them as rocks.

Another footpath leads from the road across the
meadows to where the brook is spanned by the
strangest bridge, built of brick, with one arch, but
only just wide enough for a single person to walk, and

FOOTPATHS. 2q

with parapets only four or five inches high. It is
thrown aslant the stream, and not straight across it,
and has a long brick approach. It is not unlike — on
a small scale — the bridges seen in views of Eastern
travel. Another path leads to a hamlet, consisting of
a church, a farmhouse, and three or four cottages —
a veritable hamlet in every sense of the word.

In a village a few miles distant, as you walk
between cherry and pear orchards, you pass a little
shop — the sweets, and twine, and trifles are such as
may be seen in similar windows a hundred miles
distant. There is the very wooden measure for nuts,
which has been used time out of mind, in the distant
country. Out again into the road as the sun sinks,
and westwards the wind lifts a cloud of dust, which is
lit up and made rosy by the rays passing through it.
For such is the beauty of the sunlight that it can
impart a glory even to dust.

Once more, never go by a stile (that does not look
private) without getting over it and following the path.
But they all end in one place. After rambling across
furze and heath, or through dark fir woods ; after
lingering in the meadows among the buttercups,
or by the copses where the pheasants crow; after
gathering June roses, or, in later days, staining the
lips with blackberries or cracking nuts, by-and-by the
path brings you in sight of a railway station. And
the railway station, through some process of mind,
presently compels you to go up on the platform, and
after a little puffing and revolution of wheels you
emerge at Charing-cross, or London Bridge, or
Waterloo, or Ludgate-hill, and, with the freshness of

26 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the meadows still clinging to your coat, mingle with
the crowd.

The inevitable end of every footpath round about
London is London. All paths go thither.

If it were far away in the distant country you might
sit down in the shadow upon the hay and fall asleep,
or dream awake hour after hour. • There would be na
inclination to move. But if you sat down on the sward
under the ancient pollard oak in the little mead with
the brook, and the wood of which I spoke just now as
like a glade in the enchanted Forest of Arden, this
would not be possible. It is the proximity of the-
immense City which induces a mental, a nerve-
restlessness. As you sit and would dream a
something plucks at the mind with constant reminder ;•
you cannot dream for long, you must up and away,
and, turn in which direction you please, ultimately it
will lead you to London.

There is a fascination in it ; there is a magnetism
stronger than that of the rock which drew the nails,
from Sindbad's ship. You are like a bird let out with
a string tied to the foot to flutter a little way and
return again. It is not business, for you may have
none, in the ordinary sense ; it is not " society," it-
is not pleasure. It is the presence of man in his-
myriads. There is something in the heart which
cannot be satisfied away from it.

It is a curious thing that your next-door neighbour
may be a stranger, but there are no strangers in a.
vast crowd. They all seem to have some relation-
ship, or rather, perhaps, they do not rouse the sense
of reserve which a single unknown person might.

FOOTPATHS. 27

Still, the impulse is not to be analysed; these are
mere notes acknowledging its power. The hills and
vales, and meads and woods are like the ocean upon
which Sindbad sailed ; but coming too near the load-
stone of London, the ship wends thither, whether or
no.

At least it is so with me, and I often go to London
without any object whatever, but just because I must,
and, arriving there, wander whithersoever the hurrying
throng carries me.

28 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

FLOCKS OF BIRDS.

A CEETAIN road leading outwards from a suburb,
enters at once among fields. It soon passes a thick
hedge dividing a meadow from a cornfield, in which
hedge is a spot where some bluebells may be found in
spring. Wild flowers are best seen when in masses,
a few scattered along a bank much concealed by
grass and foliage are lost, except indeed, upon those
who love them for their own sake.

This meadow in June, for instance, when the
butter-cups are high, is one broad expanse of
burnished gold. The most careless passer-by can
hardly fail to cast a glance over acres of rich yellow.
The furze, again, especially after a shower has re-
freshed its tint, must be seen by all. Where broom
grows thickly, lifting its colour well into view, or
where the bird's-foot lotus in full summer overruns
the thin grass of some upland pasture, the eye cannot
choose but acknowledge it. So, too, with charlock,
and with hill sides purple with heath, or where the
woodlands are azure with bluebells for a hundred
yards together. Learning from this, those who would
transplant wild flowers to their garden should arrange

FLOCKS OF BIRDS. 2&

to have as many as possible of the same species close
together.

The blue bells in this hedge are unseen, except by
the rabbits. The latter have a large burrow, and
until the grass is too tall, or after it is cut or grazed,
can be watched from the highway. In this hedge the
first nightingale of the year sings, beginning some
two or three days before the bird which comes to
the bushes in the gorse, which will presently be
mentioned.

It is, or rather was, a favourite meadow with the
partridges ; one summer there was, I think, a nest in
or near it, for I saw the birds there daily. But the
next year they were absent. One afternoon a brace
of partridges came over the hedge within a few inches
of my head ; they had been flushed and frightened
at some distance, and came with the wind at a
tremendous pace. It is a habit with partridges to fly
low, but just skimming the tops of the hedges, and
certainly, had they been three inches lower, they
must have taken my hat off. The knowledge that
partridges were often about there made me always
glance into this field on passing it, long after the
nesting season was over.

In October, as I looked as usual, a hawk flew
between the elms, and out into the centre of the
meadow, with a large object in his talons. He
alighted in the middle, so as to be as far as possible
from either hedge, and no doubt prepared to enjoy
his quarry, when something startled him, and he
rose again. Then, as I got a better view, I saw it
was a rat he was carrying. The long body of the

•30 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

animal was distinctly visible, and the tail depending,
the hawk had it by the shoulders or head. Flying
without the least apparent effort, the bird cleared the
elms, and I lost sight of him beyond them. Now,
the kestrel is but a small bird, and taking into
consideration the size of the bird and the weight of a
rat, it seems as great a feat in proportion as for an
eagle to snatch up a lamb.

Some distance up the road, and in the corner of
an arable field, there was a wheat rick which was
threshed and most of the straw carted away. But
there still remained the litter, and among it probably
a quantity of stray corn. There was always a flock
of sparrows on this litter — a flock that might often
be counted by the hundred. As I came near the spot
one day a sparrow-hawk, whose approach I had not
observed and which had therefore been flying low,
suddenly came over the hedge just by the loose straw.

With shrill cries the sparrows instantly rushed for
the hedge, not two yards distant; but the hawk,
dashing through the crowd of them as they rose,
carried away a victim. It was done in the tenth of
a second. He came, singled his bird, and was gone
like the wind, before the whirr of wings had ceased
on the hawthorn where the flock cowered.

Another time, but in a different direction, I saw a
hawk descend and either enter or appear to enter a
short muph-cropped hedge, but twenty yards distant.
I ran to the. spot-; the hawk of course made off, but
there was nothing in the bush save a hedge sparrow,
which had probably attracted him, but which he had
not succeeded in getting.

FLOCKS OF BIRDS. 31

Kestrels are almost common ; I have constantly
seen them while strolling along the road, generally
two together, and once three. In the latter part
of the summer and autumn they seem to be most
numerous, hovering over the recently reaped fields.
Certainly there is no scarcity of hawks here. Upon
one occasion, on Surbiton-hill, I saw a large bird
of the same kind, but not sufficiently near to identify.
From the gliding flight, the long forked tail, and
large size I supposed it to be a kite. The same bird
was going about next day, but still further off. I
cannot say that it was a kite, for unless it is a usual
haunt, it is not in my opinion wise to positively
identify a bird seen for so short a time.

The thick hedge mentioned is a favourite resort
of blackbirds, and on a warm May morning, after a
shower — they are extremely fond of a shower — half
a dozen may be heard at once whistling in the elms.
They use the elms here because there are not many
oaks ; the oak is the blackbird's favourite song-tree.
There was one one day whistling with all his might
on the lower branch of an elm, at the very roadside,
and just above him a wood-pigeon was perched. A
pair of turtle doves built in the same hedge one
spring, and while resting on the gate by the roadside
their " coo-coo " mingled with the song of the night-
ingale and thrush, the blackbird's whistle, the chiff-
chaff's " chip-chip," the willow-wren's pleading voice,
and the rustle of green corn as the wind came rushing
(as it always does to a gateway).

Goldfinches come by occasionally, not often, but
still they do come. The rarest bird seems to be the

32 NATURE NEAR LONDOX.

bullfinch. I have only seen bullfinches three or four
times in three seasons, and then only a pair. Now,
this is worthy a note, as illustrating what I have
often ventured to say about the habitat of birds being
so often local, for if judged by observation here the
bullfinch would be said to be a scarce bird by London.
But it has been stated upon the best authority that
only a few miles distant, and still nearer town, they
are common.

The road now becomes bordered by elms on either
side, forming an irregular avenue. -Almost every
elm in spring has its chaffinch loudly challenging.
The birdcatchers are aware that it is a frequented
resort, and on Sunday mornings four or five of them
used to be seen in the course of a mile, each with a
call bird in a partly darkened cage, a stuffed dummy,
and limed twigs. In the corn fields on either hand
wood-pigeons are numerous in spring and autumn.
Up to April they come in flocks, feeding on the newly-
sown grain when they can get at it, and varying it
with ivy berries, from the ivy growing up the elms.
By degrees the flocks break up as the nesting begins
in earnest.

Some pair and build much earlier than others ; in
fact, the first egg recorded is very little to be depended
on as an indication. Particular pairs (of many kinds
of birds) may have nests, and yet the species as a
species may be still flying in large packs. The flocks
which settle in these fields number from one to two
hundred. Books, wood-pigeons, and tame white
pigeons often feed amicably mixed up together ; the
white tame birds are conspicuous at a long distance

FLOCKS OF BIRDS. 33

before the crops have risen, or after the stubble is
ploughed.

I should think that the corn farmers of Surrey lose
more grain from the birds than the agriculturists
whose tenancies are a hundred miles from London. In
the comparatively wild or open districts to which I
had been accustomed before I made these observations
I cannot recollect ever seeing such vast numbers of
birds. There were places, of course, where they were
numerous, and there were several kinds more repre-
sented than is the case here, and some that are
scarcely represented at all. I have seen flocks of
wood-pigeons immensely larger than any here; but
then it was only occasionally. They came, passed
over, and were gone. Here the flocks, though not
very numerous, seem always to be about.

Sparrows crowd every hedge and field, their numbers
are incredible ; chaffinches are not to be counted ; of
greenfinches there must be thousands. From the
railway even you can see them. I caught glimpses of
a ploughed field recently sown one spring from the
window of a railway carriage, every little clod of
which seemed alive with small birds, principally
sparrows, chaffinches, and greenfinches. There must
have been thousands in that field alone. In autumn
the numbers are" even greater, or rather more
apparent.

One autumn some correspondence appeared lament-
ing the scarcity of small birds (and again in the spring
the same cry was raised) ; people said that they had
walked along the roads or footpaths and there were
none in the hedges. They were quite correct — the

D

34 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

birds were not in the hedges, they were in the corn
and stubble. After the nesting is well over and the
wheat is ripe the birds leave the hedges and go out
into the wheatfields ; at the same time the sparrows
quit the house-tops and gardens and do the same. At
the very time this complaint was raised, the stubbles
in Surrey, as I can vouch, were crowded with small
birds.

If you walked across the stubble flocks of hundreds
rose out of your way; if you leant on a gate and
watched a few minutes you could see small flocks in
every quarter of the field rising and settling again.
These movements indicated a larger number in the
stubble there, for where a great flock is feeding some
few every now and then fly up restlessly. Earlier
than that in the summer there was not a wheat field
where you could not find numerous wheatears picked
as clean as if threshed where they stood. In some
places, the wheat was quite thinned.

Later in the year there seems a movement of small
birds from the lower to the higher lands. One
December day I remember particularly visiting the
neighbourhood of Ewell, where the lands begin to rise
up towards the Downs. Certainly, I have seldom
seen such vast numbers of small birds. Up from the
stubble flew sparrows, chaffinches, greenfinches,
yellow-hammers, in such flocks that the low-cropped
hedge was covered with them. A second correspond-
ence appeared in the spring upon the same subject,
and again the scarcity of small birds was deplored.

So far as the neighbourhood of London was con-
cerned, this was the exact reverse of the truth.

FLOCKS OF BIRDS. 35

Small birds swarmed, as I have already stated, in
every ploughed field. All the birdcatchers in London
with traps and nets and limed twigs could never make
the slightest appreciable difference to such flocks. I
have always expressed my detestation of the bird-
catcher ; but it is founded on other grounds, and not
from any fear of the diminution of numbers only.
Where the birdcatcher does inflict irretrievable injury
is in this way — a bird, say a nightingale, say a gold-
finch, has had a nest for years in the corner of a
garden, or [ an apple-tree in an orchard. The bird-
catcher presently decoys one or other of these, and
thenceforward the spot is deserted. The song is
heard no more ; the nest never again rebuilt.

The first spring I resided in Surrey I was fairly
astonished and delighted at the bird life which
proclaimed itself everywhere. The bevies of chiffchaffs
and willow wrens which came to the thickets in the
furze, the chorus of thrushes and blackbirds, the
chaffinches in the elms, the greenfinches in the hedges,
wood-pigeons and turtle-doves in the copses, tree pipits
about the oaks in the cornfields ; every bush, every
tree, almost every clod, for the larks were so many,
seemed to have its songster. As for nightingales, I
never knew so many in the most secluded country.

There are more round about London than in all the
woodlands I used to ramble through. When people
go into the country they really leave the birds behind
them. It was the same, I found, after longer observa-
tion, with birds perhaps less widely known as with
those universally recognized — such, for instance, as
shrikes. The winter when the cry was raised that

36 NATURE NEAB LONDOX.

there were no birds, that the blackbirds and thrushes
had left the lawns and must be dead, and how wicked
it would be to take a nest next year, I had not the
least difficulty in finding plenty of them.

They had simply gone to the water meadows, the
brooks, and moist places generally. Every locality
where running water kept the ground moist and per-
mitted of movement among the creeping things which
form these birds' food, was naturally resorted to.
Thrushes and blackbirds, although they do not pack —
that is, regularly fly in flocks — undoubtedly migrate
when pressed by weather.

They are well known to arrive on the east coast
from Norway in numbers as the cold increases. I see
no reason why we may not suppose that in very severe
and continued frost the thrushes and blackbirds round
London fly westwards towards the milder side of
the island. It seems to me that when, some years
since, I used to stroll round the water meadows in a
western county for snipes in frosty weather, the
hedges were full of thrushes and blackbirds — quite
full of them.

Now, though there were thrushes and blackbirds
about the brooks by London last winter, there were
few in the hedges generally. Had they, then, flown
westwards? It is my belief that they had. They
had left the hard-bound ground about London for the
softer and moister lands farther west. They had
crossed the rain-line. When frost prevents access to
food in the east, thrushes and blackbirds move west-
wards, just as the fieldfares and redwings do.

That the fieldfares and redwings do so I can say with

FLOCKS OF BIEDS. 37

confidence, because, as they move in large flocks, there
is no difficulty in tracing the direction in which they
are going. They all went west when the severe
weather began. On the southern side of London,
at least in the districts I am best acquainted with,
there was hardly a fieldfare or redwing to be seen for
weeks and even months. Towards spring they came
back, flying east for Norway. As thrushes and black-
birds move singly, and not with concerted action, their
motions cannot be determined with such precision, but
all the facts are in favour of the belief that they also
went west.

That they were killed by the frost and snow I utterly
refuse to credit. Some few, no doubt, were — I saw
some greatly enfeebled by starvation — but not the
mass. If so many had been destroyed their bodies
must have been seen when there was no foliage to
hide them, and no insects to quickly play the sca-
venger as in summer. Some were killed by cats ; a
few perhaps by rats, for in sharp winters they go
down into the ditches, and I saw a dead redwing, torn
and disfigured, at the mouth of a drain during the
snow, where it might have been fastened on by a rat.
But it is quite improbable that thousands died as was
supposed.

Thrushes and blackbirds are not like rooks. Books
are so bound by tradition and habit that they very
rarely quit the locality where they were reared. Their
whole lives are spent in the neighbourhood of the nest
trees and the woods where they sleep. They may
travel miles during the day, but they always come
back to roost. These are the birds that suffer the

38 NATUHE NEAR LONDON.

most during long frosts and snows. Unable to break
the chain that binds them to one spot, they die rather
than desert it. A miserable time, indeed, they had of
it that winter, but I never heard that any one proposed
feeding the rooks, the very birds that wanted it most.

Swallows, again, were declared by many to be fewer.
It is not at all unlikely that they were fewer. The
wet season was unfavourable to them; still a good
deal of the supposed absence of swallows may be
through the observer not looking for them in the right
place. If not wheeling in the sky, look for them over
the water, the river, or great ponds ; if not there, look
along the moist fields or shady woodland meadows.
They vary their haunts with the state of the atmo-
sphere, which causes insects to be more numerous in
one place at one time, and presently in another.

A very wet season is more fatal than the sharpest
frost ; it acts by practically reducing the births, leaving
the ordinary death-rate to continue. Consequently,
as the old birds die, there are none (or fewer) to supply
their places. Once more let me express the opinion
that there are as many small birds round London as
in the country, and no measure is needed to protect
the species at large. Protection, if needed, is required
for the individual. Sweep the roads and lanes clear
of the birdcatchers, but do not prevent a boy from
taking a nest in the open fields or commons. If it
were made illegal to sell full-grown birds, half the evil
would be stopped at once if the law were enforced.
The question is full of difficulties. To prevent or
attempt to prevent the owner of a garden from shoot-
ing the bullfinches or blackbirds and so on that s.teal

FLOCKS OF BIRDS. 39

his fruit, or destroy his buds, is absurd. It is equally
absurd to fine — what twaddle ! — a lad for taking a
bird's egg. The only point upon which I am fully
clear is that the birdcatcher who takes birds on
land not his own or in his occupation, on public
property, as roads, wastes, commons, and so forth,
ought to be rigidly put down. But as for the small
birds as a mass, I am convinced that they will never
cease out of the land.

It is not easy to progress far along this road, because
every bird suggests so many reflections and recollec-
tions. Upon approaching the rising ground at Ewell
green plovers or peewits become plentiful in the corn-
fields. In spring and early summer the flocks break up
to some extent, and the scattered parties conduct their
nesting operations in the pastures or on the downs.
In autumn they collect together again, and flocks of
fifty or more are commonly seen. Now and then a
much larger flock comes down into the plain, wheeling
to and fro, and presently descending upon an arable
field, where they cover the ground.

40 NATUttE NEAR LONDON.

NIGHTINGALE ROAD.

THE wayside is open to all, and that which it affords
may be enjoyed without fee ; therefore it is that I
return to it so often. It is a fact that common hedge-
rows often yield more of general interest than the
innermost recesses of carefully guarded preserves,
which by day are frequently still, silent, and denuded
of everything, even of game ; nor can flowers flourish
in such thick shade, nor where fir-needles cover the
ground.

By the same wayside of which I have already spoken
there is a birch copse, through which runs a road open
to foot passengers, but not to wheel traffic, and also a
second footpath. From these a little observation will
show that almost all the life and interest of the copse
is at, or near, the edge, and can be readily seen with-
out trespassing a single yard. Sometimes, when it is
quiet in the evening and the main highway is com-
paratively deserted, a hare comes stealing down the
track through the copse and after lingering there
awhile crosses the highway into the stubble on the
other side.

In one of these fields, just opposite the copse, a
covey of partridges had their rendezvous, and I

NIGHTINGALE EOAD. 41

watched them from the road, evening after evening,
issue one by one, calling as they appeared from a
breadth of mangolds. Their sleeping-place seemed
to be about a hundred yards from the wayside.
Another arable field just opposite is bounded by the
road with iron wire or railing, instead of a hedge, and
the low mound in which the stakes are fixed swarmed
one summer with ant-hills full of eggs, and a slight
rustle in the corn as I approached told where the
parent bird had just led her chicks from the feast to
shelter.

Passing into the copse by the road, which is metalled
but weedgrown from lack of use, the grasshoppers sing
from the sward at the sides, but the birds are silent
as the summer ends. Pink striped bells of convol-
vulus flower over the flints and gravel, the stones
nearly hidden by their runners and leaves; yellow
toadflax or eggs and bacon grew here till a weeding
took place, since which it has not reappeared, but in
its place viper's bugloss sprang up, a plant which was
not previously to be found there. Hawkweeds, some
wild vetches, white yarrow, thistles, and burdocks
conceal the flints yet further, so that the track has
the appearance of a green drive.

The slender birch and ash poles are hung with
woodbine and wild hops, both growing in profusion.
A cream-coloured wall of woodbine in flower extends
in one spot, in another festoons of hops hang grace-
fully, and so thick as to hide everything beyond them.
There is scarce a stole without its woodbine or hops ;
many of the poles, though larger than the arm, are
scored with spiral grooves left by the bines. Under

42 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

these bushes of woodbine the nightingales when
they first arrive in spring are fond of searching
for food, and dart on a grub with a low satisfied
" kurr."

The place is so favourite a resort with these birds
that it might well be called Nightingale Copse. Four
or five may be heard singing at once on a warm May
morning, and at least two may often be seen as well
as heard at the same time. They sometimes sing
from the trees, as well as from the bushes ; one was
singing one morning on an elm branch which projected
over the road, and under which the van drivers jogged
indifferently along. Sometimes they sing from the
dark foliage of the Scotch firs.

As the summer wanes they haunt the hawthorn
hedge by the roadside, leaving the interior of the
copse, and may often be seen on the dry and dusty
sward. When chiffchaff and willow-wren first come
they remain in the treetops, but in the summer de-
scend into the lower bushes, and, like the nightin-
gales, come out upon the sward by the wayside.
Nightingale Copse is also a great favourite with
cuckoos. There are a few oaks in it, and in the
meadows in the rear many detached hawthorn bushes,
and two or three small groups of trees, chestnuts,
lime, and elm. From the hawthorns to the elms,
and from the elms to the oaks, the cuckoos continually
circulate, calling as they fly.

One morning in May, while resting on a rail in
the copse, I heard four calling close by, the furthest
not a hundred yards distant, and as they continually
changed their positions flying round there was always

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 43

one in sight. They circled round singing ; the instant
one ceased another took it up, a perfect madrigal. In
the evening, at eight o'clock, I found them there again
still singing. The same detached groups of trees are
much frequented by wood-pigeons, especially towards
autumn.

Books prefer to perch on the highest branches,
wood-pigeons more in the body of the tree, and when
the boughs are bare of leaves a flock of the latter may
be recognized in this way as far as the eye can see, and
when the difference of colour is rendered imperceptible
by distance. The wood-pigeon when perched has a
rounded appearance ; the rook a longer and sharper
outline.

By one corner of the copse there is an oak, hollow
within, but still green and flourishing. The hollow is
black and charred ; some mischievous boys must have
lighted a fire inside it, just as the ploughboys do in
the far away country. A little pond in the meadow
close by is so overhung by another oak, and so sur-
rounded with bramble and hawthorn, that the water
lies in perpetual shade. It is just the spot where, if
rabbits were about, one might be found sitting out on
the bank under the brambles. This overhanging
oak was broken by the famous October snow, 1880,
further splintered by the gales of the next year, and
its trunk is now split from top to bottom as if with
wedges.

These meadows in spring are full of cowslips, and
in one part the meadow-orchis flourishes. The
method of making cowslip balls is universally known
to children, from the most remote hamlet to the very

44 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

verge of London, and the little children who dance
along the green sward by the road here, if they chance
to touch a nettle, at once search for a dock leaf to lay
on it and assuage the smart. Country children, and
indeed older folk, call the foliage of the knotted fig-
wort cutfinger leaves, as they are believed to assist
the cure of a cut or sore.

Easpberry suckers shoot up in one part of the
copse; the fruit is doubtless eaten by the birds.
Troops of them come here, travelling along the great
hedge by the wayside, and all seem to prefer the out-
side trees and bushes to the interior of the copse.
This great hedge is as wide as a country double
mound, though it has but one ditch ; the thick haw-
thorn, blackthorn, elder, and bramble — the oaks,
elms, ashes, and firs form, in fact, almost a cover
of themselves.

In the early spring, when the east wind rushes with
bitter energy across the plains, this immense hedge,
as far as it extends, shelters the wayfarer, the road
being on the southern side, so that he can enjoy such
gleams of sunshine as appear. In summer the place
is, of course for the same reason, extremely warm,
unless the breeze chances to come up strong from the
west, when it sweeps over the open corn fields fresh
and sweet. Stoats and weasels are common on the
mound, or crossing the road to the corn ; they seem
more numerous in autumn, and I fear leveret and
partridge are thinned by them.

Mice abound ; in spring they are sometimes up in
the blackthorn bushes, perhaps for the young buds.
In summer they may often be heard rushing along

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 45

the furrows across the wayside sward, scarce concealed
by the wiry grass. Flowers are very local in habit ;
the spurge, for instance, which is common in a road
parallel to this, is not to be seen, and not very much
cow-parsnip, or " gix," one of the most freely-
growing hedge plants, which almost chokes the
mounds near by. Willowherbs, however, fill every
place in the ditch here where they can find room
between the bushes, and the arum is equally common,
but the lesser celandine absent.

Towards evening, as the clover and vetches closed
their leaves tinder the dew, giving the fields a different
aspect and another green, I used occasionally to watch
from here a pair of herons, sailing over in their calm
serene way. Their flight was in the direction of the
Thames, and they then passed evening after evening,
but the following summer they did not come. One
evening, later on in autumn, two birds appeared
descending across the corn fields towards a secluded
hollow where there was water, and, although at a
considerable distance, from their manner of flight I
could have no doubt they were teal.

The spotted leaves of the arum appeared in the
ditches in this locality very nearly simultaneously with
the first whistling of the blackbirds in February ; last
spring the chiffchaff sang soon after the flowering of
the lesser celandine (not in this hedge, but near by),
and the first swift was noticed within a day or two of
the opening of the May bloom. Although not exactly,
yet in a measure, the movements of plant and bird
life correspond.

In a closely cropped hedge opposite this great

46 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

mound (cropped because enclosing a cornfield) there
grows a solitary shrub of the wayfaring tree. Though
well known elsewhere, there is not, so far as I am
aware, another bush of it for miles, and I should not
have noticed this had not this part of the highway
been so pleasant a place to stroll to and fro in almost
all the year. The twigs of the wayfaring tree are
covered with a mealy substance which comes off on
the fingers when touched. A stray shrub or plant
like this sometimes seems of more interest than a whole
group.

For instance, most of the cottage gardens have fox-
gloves in them, but I had not observed any wild, till
one afternoon near some woods I found a tall and
beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden
specimens, and with bells more thickly crowded,
lifting its spike of purple above the low cropped haw-
thorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to the
foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here,
alone and unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in
spring come to the broad wayside sward by the great
mound to the bright dandelions ; presently to the
white clover, and later to the heaths.

There are about sixty wild flowers which grow
freely along this road, namely, yellow agrimony,
amphibious persicaria, arum, avens, bindweed, bird's
foot lotus, bittersweet, blackberry, black and white
bryony, brooklime, burdock, buttercups, wild camo-
mile, wild carrot, celandine — the great and lesser —
cinquefoil, cleavers, corn buttercup, corn mint, corn
sowthistle, and spurrey, cowslip, cow-parsnip, wild
parsley, daisy, dandelion, dead nettle, and white dog

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 47

rose, and trailing rose, violets, the sweet and the
scentless, figwort, veronica, ground ivy, willowherb,
two sorts, herb Kobert, honeysuckle, lady's smock,
purple loosestrife, mallow, meadow orchis, meadow-
sweet, yarrow, moon daisy, St. John's wort, pim-
pernel, water plaint ain, poppy, rattles, scabious, self-
heal, silverweed, sow thistle, stitchwort, teazles,
tormentil, vetches, and yellow vetch.

To these may be added an occasional bacon and
eggs, a few harebells (plenty on higher ground), the
yellow iris, by the adjoining brook, and flowering
shrubs and trees, as dogwood, gorse, privet, black-
thorn, hawthorn, horse chestnut, besides wild hops,
the horsetails on the mounds, and such plants as
grow everywhere, as chickweed, groundsel, and so
forth. A solitary shrub of mugwort grows at some
distance, but in the same district, and in one hedge-
row the wild guelder rose flourishes. Anemones and
primroses are not found along or near this road, nor
woodruff. At the first glance a list like this reads as
if flowers abounded, but the reverse is the impression
to those who frequent the place.

It is really a very short list, and as of course all
of these do not appear at once there really is rather
a scarcity of wild flowers, so far at least as variety
goes. Just in the spring there is a burst of colour,
and again in the autumn ; but for the rest, if we set
aside the roses in June, there seems quite an absence
of flowers during the summer. The wayside is green,
the ditches are green, the mounds green ; if you enter
and stroll round the meadows, they are green too, or
white in places with umbelliferous plants, principally

48 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

parsley and cow-parsnip. But these become monoto-
nous. Therefore, I am constrained to describe it as
a district somewhat lacking flowers, meaning, of
course, in point of variety.

Compared with the hedges and fields of Wiltshire,
Gloucestershire, Berkshire, and similar south-western
localities, it seems flowerless. On the other hand,
southern London can boast stretches of heath, which,
when in full bloom, rival Scotch hillsides. These
remarks are written entirely from a non-scientific
point of view. Professional botanists may produce
lists of thrice the length, and prove that all the
flowers of England are to be found near London. But
it will not alter the fact that to the ordinary eye the
roads and lanes just south of London are in the
middle of the summer comparatively bare of colour.
They should be visited in spring and autumn.

Nor do the meadows seem to produce so many
varieties of grass as farther to the south-west. But
beetles of every kind and size, from the great stag
beetle, helplessly floundering through the evening air
and clinging to your coat, down to the green, bronze,
and gilded species that hasten across the path, appear
extremely numerous. Warm, dry sands, light soils,
and furze and heath are probably favourable to them.

From this roadside I have seldom heard the corn-
crake, and never once the grasshopper lark. These
two birds are so characteristic of the meadows in
south-western counties that a summer evening seems
silent to me without the " crake, crake ! " of the one
and the singular sibilous rattle of the other. But they
come to other places not far distant from the road,

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 49

and one summer a grasshopper-lark could be heard
in some meadows where I had not heard it the
two preceding seasons. On the mounds field crickets
cry persistently.

At the end of the hedge which is near a brook, a
sedge-reedling takes up his residence in the spring.
The sedge-reedlings here begin to call very early ; the
first date I have down is the 16th of April, which is,
I think, some weeks before they begin in other
localities. In one ditch beside the road (not in this
particular hedge) there grows a fine bunch of reeds.
Though watery, on account of the artificial drains
from the arable fields, the spot is on much higher
ground than the brook, and it is a little singular
that while reeds flourish in this place .they are not to
be found by the brook.

The elms of the neighbourhood, wherever they can
be utilised as posts, are unmercifully wired, wires
twisted round, holes bored and the ends of wire driven
in or staples inserted, and the same with the young
oaks. Many trees are much disfigured from this cause,
the bark is worn off on many; and others, which
have recovered, have bulging rings, where it swelled
up over the iron. The heads of large nails and
staples are easily discovered where the wire has
disappeared, sometimes three or four, one above the
other, in the same tree. A fine avenue of elms which
shades part of a suburb appears to be dying by
degrees — the too common fate of elms in such places.

How many beautiful trees have thus perished near
London ? — witness the large elms that once stood in
Jews' Walk, at Sydenham. Barking the trunks for

50 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

sheer wanton mischief is undoubtedly the cause in
some cases, and it has been suggested that quicksilver
has occasionally been inserted in gimlet holes. The
mercury is supposed to work up the channels of the
sap, and to prevent its flow.

But may not the ordinary conditions of suburban
improvement often account for the decay of such
trees without occult causes ? Sewers carry away the
water that used to moisten the roots, and being at
some depth, they not only take the surface water of
a storm before it has had time to penetrate, but drain
the lower stratum completely. Then, gas-pipes fre-
quently leak, so much so that the soil for yards is
saturated and emits a smell of gas. Boots passing
through such a soil can scarcely be healthy, and
very probably in making excavations for laying pipes
the roots are cut through. The young trees that
have been planted in some places are, I notice, often
bored by grubs to an extraordinary extent, and will
never make sound timber.

One July day, while walking on this road, I
happened to look over a gateway and saw that a
large and prominent mansion on the summit of
some elevated ground had apparently disappeared.
The day was very clear and bright, sunny and hot,
and there was no natural vapour. But on the light
north-east wind there came slowly towards me a
bluish-yellow mist, the edge of which was clearly
denned, and which blotted out distant objects and
blurred those nearer at hand. The appearance of the
open arable field over which I was looking changed
as it approached.

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 51

In front of the wall of mist the sunshine lit the
field up brightly, behind the ground was dull, and yet
not in shadow. It came so slowly that its movement
could be easily watched. When it went over me
there was a perceptible coolness and a faint smell of
damp smoke, and immediately the road, which had
been white under the sunshine, took a dim, yellowish
hue. The sun was not shut out nor even obscured,
but the rays had to pass through a thicker medium.
This haze was not thick enough to be called fog, nor
was it the summer haze that in the country adds to
the beauty of distant hills and woods.

It was clearly the atmosphere — not the fog — but
simply the atmosphere of London brought out over
the fields by a change in the wind, and prevented
from diffusing itself by conditions of which nothing
seems known. For at ordinary times the atmosphere
of London diffuses itself in aerial space and is lost,
but on this hot July day it came bodily and undiluted
out into the cornfields. From .its appearance I
should say it would travel many miles in the same
condition. In November fog seems seasonable : in
hot and dry July this phenomenon was striking.

Along the road flocks of sheep continue to travel,
some weary enough, and these, gravitating to the
rear of the flock by reason of infirmity, lie down in
the dust to rest, while their companions feed on the
wayside sward. But the shepherds are careful of
them, and do not hasten. Shepherds here often
carry the pastoral crook. In districts far from the
metropolis you may wander about for days, and
with sheep all round you, never see a shepherd

52 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

with a crook; but near town the pastoral staff is
common.

These flocks appear to be on their way to the
southern down farms, and, as I said before, the
shepherds are tender over their sheep and careful
not to press them. I regret that I cannot say the
same about the bullocks, droves of which continually
go by, often black cattle, and occasionally even the
little Highland animals. The appearance of some of
these droves is quite sufficient to indicate the treat-
ment they have undergone. Staring eyes, heads
continually turned from side to side, starting at
everything, sometimes bare places on the shoulders,
all tell the same tale of blows and brutal treatment.

Suburban streets which a minute before were
crowded with ladies and children (most gentlemen are
in town at mid-day) are suddenly vacated when the
word passes that cattle are coming. People rush every-
where, into gardens, shops, back lanes, anywhere, as
if the ringing scabbards of charging cavalry were
heard, or the peculiar thumping rattle of rifles as
they come to the "present " before a storm of bullets.
It is no wonder that townsfolk exhibit a fear of
cattle which makes their friends laugh when they
visit the country after such experiences as these.
This should be put down with a firm hand.

By the roadside here the hay tyers, who cut up the
hayricks into trusses, use balances — a trifling matter,
but sufficient to mark a difference, for in the west
such men use a steelyard slung on a prong, the
handle of the prong on the shoulder and the points
stuck in the rick, with which to weigh the trusses..

NIGHTINGALE ROAD. 53

Wooden cottages, wooden barns, wooden mills are
also characteristic.

Mouchers come along the road at all times and
seasons, gathering sacksfull of dandelions in spring,
digging up fern roots and cowslip mars for sale,
cutting briars for standard roses, gathering water-
cresses and mushrooms, and in the winter cutting
rushes.

There is a rook with white feathers in the wing
which belongs to an adjacent rookery, and I have
observed a blackbird also streaked with white. One
January day, when the snow was on the ground and
the frost was sharp, when the pale sun seemed to
shine brightest round the rim of the disk, as if there
were a band of stronger light there, I saw a white
animal under a heap of poles by the wayside, near
the great hedge I have mentioned. It immediately
concealed itself, but, thinking that it was a ferret
gone astray, I waited, and presently the head and
neck were cautiously protruded.

I made the usual call with the lips, but the creature
instantly returned to cover. I waited again, hiding
this time, and after an interval the creature moved
and hastened away from the poles, where it was, in a
measure, exposed, to the more secure shelter of some
bushes. Then I saw that it was of a clear white,
while so-called white ferrets are usually a dingy
yellow, and the white tail was tipped with black.
From these circumstances, and from the timidity and
anxious desire to escape observation, I could only
conclude that it was a white stoat.

Stoats, as remarked previously, are numerous in

54 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

these hedges, and it was quite possible for a white
one to be among them. The white stoat may be said
to exactly resemble the ermine. The interest of the
circumstance arises not from, its rarity, but from its
occurring so near the metropolis.

A BROOK.

SOME low wooden rails guarding the approach to a
bridge over a brook one day induced me to rest under
an aspen, with my back against the tree. Some
horse-chestnuts, beeches, and alders grew there,
fringing the end of a long plantation of willow stoles
which extended in the rear following the stream. In
front, southwards, there were open meadows and
cornfields, over which shadow and sunshine glided
in succession as the sweet westerly wind carried the
white clouds before it.

The brimming brook, as it wound towards me
through the meads, seemed to tremble on the verge
of overflowing, as the crown of wine in a glass rises
yet does not spill. Level with the green grass, the
water gleamed as though polished where it flowed
smoothly, crossed with the dark shadows of willows
which leaned over it. By the bridge, where the
breeze rushed through the arches, a ripple flashed
back the golden rays. The surface by the shore
slipped towards a side hatch and passed over in a
liquid curve, clear and unvarying, as if of solid
crystal, till shattered on the stones, where the air

56 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

caught up and played with the sound of the bubbles
as they broke.

Beyond the green slope of corn, a thin, soft vapour
hung on the distant woods, and hid the hills. The
pale young leaves of the aspen rustled faintly, not yet
with their full sound ; the sprays of the horse-chest-
nut, drooping with the late frosts, could not yet keep
out the sunshine with their broad green. A white
spot on the footpath yonder was where the bloom had
fallen from a blackthorn bush.

The note of the tree-pipit came from over the corn
— there were some detached oaks away in the midst
of the field, and the birds were doubtless flying con-
tinually up and down between the wheat and the
branches. A willow- wren sang plaintively in the
plantation behind, and once a cuckoo called at a
distance. How beautiful is the sunshine ! The
very dust of the road at my feet seemed to glow
with whiteness, to be lit up by it, and to become
another thing. This spot henceforward was a place
of pilgrimage.

Looking that morning over the parapet of the
bridge, down stream, there was a dead branch at the
mouth of the arch, it had caught and got fixed while
it floated along. A quantity of aquatic weeds coming
down the stream had drifted against the branch and
remained entangled in it. Fresh weeds were still
coming and adding to the mass, which had attracted
a water-rat.

Perched on the branch the little brown creature
bent forward over the surface, and with its two fore-
paws drew towards it the slender thread of a weed,

A BROOK. 57

exactly as with hands. Holding the thread in the
paws, it nibbled it, eating the sweet and tender
portion, feeding without fear, though but a few feet
away, and precisely beneath me.

In a minute the surface of the current was disturbed
by larger ripples. There had been a ripple caused
by the draught through the arch, but this was now
increased. Directly afterwards a moorhen swam out,
and began to search among the edge of the tangled
weeds. So long as I was perfectly still the bird took
no heed, but at a slight movement instantly scuttled
back under the arch. The water-rat, less timorous,
paused, looked round, and returned to feeding.

Crossing to the other side of the bridge, up stream,
and looking over, the current had scooped away the
sand of the bottom by the central pier, exposing
the brickwork to some depth — the same undermining
process that goes on by the piers of bridges over
great rivers. Nearer the shore the sand has silted
up, leaving it shallow, where water-parsnip and other
weeds joined, as it were, the verge of the grass and
the stream. The sunshine reflected from the ripples
on this, the southern side, continually ran with a
swift, trembling motion up the arch.

Penetrating the clear water, the light revealed the
tiniest stone at the bottom : but there was no fish,
no water-rat, or moorhen on this side. Neither on
that nor many succeeding mornings could anything
be seen there ; the tail of the arch was evidently the
favourite spot. Carefully looking over that side
again, the moorhen who had been out rushed back ;
the water-rat was gone. Were there any fish? In

58 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the shadow the water was difficult to see through,
and the brown scum of spring that lined the bottom
rendered everything uncertain.

By gazing steadily at a stone my eyes presently
became accustomed to the peculiar light, the pupils
adjusted themselves to it, and the brown tints became
more distinctly denned. Then sweeping by degrees
from a stone to another, and from thence to a
rotting stick embedded in the sand, I searched the
bottom inch by inch. If you look, as it were, at
large — at everything at once — you see nothing.
If you take some object as a fixed point, gaze all
around it, and then move to another, nothing can
escape.

Even the deepest, darkest water (not, of course,
muddy) yields after a while to the eye. Half close
the eyelids, and while gazing into it let your intel-
ligence rather wait upon the corners of the eye than
on the glance you cast straight forward. For some
reason when thus gazing the edge of the eye becomes
exceedingly sensitive, and you are conscious of slight
motions or of a thickness — not a defined object, but
a thickness which indicates an object — which is
otherwise quite invisible.

The slow feeling sway of a fish's tail, the edges of
which curl over and grasp the water, may in this
manner be identified without being positively seen,
and the dark outline of its body known to exist
against the equally dark water or bank. Shift, too,
your position according to the fall of the light, just
as in looking at a painting. From one point of view
the canvas shows little but the presence of paint and

A BROOK. 59

blurred colour, from another at the side the picture
stands out.

Sometimes the water can be seen into best from
above, sometimes by lying on the sward, now by
standing back a little way, or crossing to the opposite
shore. A spot where the sunshine sparkles with
dazzling gleam is perhaps perfectly impenetrable till
you get the other side of the ripple, when the same
rays that just now baffled the glance light up the
bottom as if thrown from a mirror for the purpose.
I convinced myself that there was nothing here,
nothing visible at present — not so much as a stickle-
back.

Yet the stream ran clear and sweet, and deep in
places. It was too broad for leaping over. Down
the current sedges grew thickly at a curve ; up the
stream the young flags were rising ; it had an in-
habited look, if such a term may be used, and
moorhens and water-rats were about but no fish.
A wide furrow came along the meadow and joined the
stream from the side. Into this furrow, at flood
time, the stream overflowed further up, and irrigated
the level sward.

At present it was dry, its course, traced by the
yellowish and white hue of the grasses in it only
recently under water, contrasting with the brilliant
green of the sweet turf around. There was a marsh
marigold in it, with stems a quarter of an inch thick;
and in the grass on the verge, but just beyond where
the flood reached, grew the lilac-tinted cuckoo flowers,
or cardamine.

The side hatch supplied a pond which was only

€0 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

divided from the brook by a strip of sward not more
than twenty yards across. The surface of the pond
was dotted with patches of scum that had risen from
the bottom. Part at least of it was shallow, for a
dead branch blown from an elm projected above the
water, and to it came a sedge-reedling for a moment.
The sedge-reedling is so fond of sedges, and reeds,
and thick undergrowth, that though you hear it
perpetually within a few yards it is not easy to
see one. On this bare branch the bird was well
displayed, and the streak by the eye was visible ;
but he stayed there for a second or two only, and
then back again to the sedges and willows.

There were fish I felt sure as I left the spot and
returned along the dusty road, but where were
they?

On the sward by the wayside, among the nettles
ai*d under the bushes, and on the mound the dark
green arum leaves grew everywhere, sometimes in
bunches close together. These bunches varied — in
one place the leaves were all spotted with black
irregular blotches ; in another the leaves were without
such markings. When the root leaves of the arum
first push up they are closely rolled together in a
pointed spike.

This, rising among the dead and matted leaves of
the autumn, occasionally passes through holes in
them. As the spike grows it lifts the dead leaves
with it, which hold it like a ring and prevent it from
unfolding. The force of growth is not sufficiently
strong to burst the bond asunder till the green leaves
have attained considerable size.

A BEOOK. 61

A little earlier in the year the chattering of magpies
would have been heard while looking for the signs
of spring, but they were now occupied with their
nests. There are several within a short distance,
easily distinguished in winter, but somewhat hidden
now by the young leaves. Just before they settled
down to housekeeping there was a great chattering
and fluttering and excitement, as they chased each
other from elm to elm.

Four or five were then often in the same field, some
in the trees, some on the ground, their white and black
showing distinctly on the level brown earth recently
harrowed or rolled. On such a surface birds are
visible at a distance ; but when the blades of the corn
begin to reach any height such as alight are concealed.
In many districts of the country that might be called
wild and lonely, the magpie is almost extinct. Once
now and then a pair may be observed, and thoie
who know their haunts can, of course, find them,
but to a visitor passing through, there seems none.
But here, so near the metropolis, the magpies are
common, and during an hour's walk their cry is
almost sure to be heard. They have, however, their
favourite locality, where they are much more fre-
quently seen.

Coming to my seat under the aspen by the bridge
week after week, the burdocks by the wayside
gradually spread their leaves, and the procession of
the flowers went on. The dandelion, the lesser
celandine, the marsh marigold, the coltsfoot, all
yellow, had already led the van, closely accompanied
by the purple ground-ivy, the red dead nettle, and the

62 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

daisy ; this last a late comer in the neighbourhood.
The blackthorn, the horse-chestnut, and the hawthorn
came, and the meadows were golden with the butter-
cups.

Once only had I noticed any indication of fish in
the brook ; it was on a warm Saturday afternoon,
when there was a labourer a long way up the stream,
stooping in a peculiar manner near the edge of the
water with a stick in his hand. He was, I felt sure,
trying to wire a spawning jack, but did not succeed.
Many weeks had passed, and now there came (as the
close time for coarse fish expired) a concourse of
anglers to the almost stagnant pond fed by the side
hatch.

Well-dressed lads with elegant and finished tackle
rode up on their bicycles, with their rods slung at
their backs. Hoisting the bicycles over the gate into
the meadow, they left them leaning against the elms,
fitted their rods and fished in the pond. Poorer boys,
with long wands cut from the hedge and ruder lines,
trudged up on foot, sat down on the sward and
watched their corks by the hour together. Grown
men of the artisan class, covered with the dust of
many miles tramping, came with their luncheons in
a handkerchief, and set about their sport with a quiet
earnestness which argued long if desultory practice.

In fine weather there were often a dozen youths
and four or five men standing, sitting, or kneeling on
the turf along the shore of the pond, all intent on
their floats, and very nearly silent. People driving
along the highway stopped their traps, and carts, and
vans a minute or two to watch them : passengers on

A BROOK. 63

foot leaned over the gate, or sat down and waited
expectantly.

Sometimes one of the more venturesome anglers
would tuck up his trousers and walk into the shallow
water, so as to be able to cast his bait under the
opposite bank, where it was deep. Then an ancient
and much battered punt was discovered aground in a
field at some distance, and dragged to the pond. One
end of the punt had quite rotted away, but by standing
at the other, so as to depress it there and lift the open
end above the surface, two, or even three, could make
a shift to fish from it.

The silent and motionless eagerness with which these
anglers dwelt upon their floats, grave as herons, could
not have been exceeded. There they were day after
day, always patient and always hopeful. Occasionally
a small catch — a mere " bait " — was handed round for
inspection ; and once a cunning fisherman, acquainted
with all the secrets of his craft, succeeded in drawing
forth three perch, perhaps a quarter of a pound each,
and one slender eel. These made quite a show, and
were greatly admired ; but I never saw the same man
there again. He was satisfied.

As I sat on the white rail under the aspen, and
inhaled the scent of the beans flowering hard by,
there was a question which suggested itself to me, and
the answer to which I never could supply. The crowd
about the pond all stood with their backs to the
beautiful flowing brook. They had before them the
muddy banks of the stagnant pool, on whose surface
patches of scum floated.

Behind them was the delicious stream, clear and

64 NATUEE NEAR LONDON.

limpid, bordered with sedge and willow and flags, and
overhung with branches. The strip of sward between
the two waters was certainly not more than twenty
yards ; there was no division, hedge, or railing, and
evidently no preservation, for the mouchers came and
washed their water-cress which they had gathered in
the ditches by the side hatch, and no one interfered
with them.

There was no keeper or water bailiff, not even a
notice board. Policemen, on foot and mounted, passed
several times daily, and, like everybody else, paused
to see the sport, but said not a word. Clearly, there
was nothing whatever to prevent any of those present
from angling in the stream; yet they one and all,
without exception, fished in the pond. This seemed
to me a very remarkable fact.

After a while I noticed another circumstance ;
nobody ever even looked into the stream or under
the arches of the bridge. No one spared a moment
from his float amid the scum of the pond, just
to stroll twenty paces and glance at the swift current.
It appeared from this that the pond had a reputa-
tion for fish, and the brook had not. Everybody who
had angled in the pond recommended his friends
to go and do likewise. There were fish in the
pond.

So every fresh comer went and angled there, and
accepted the fact that there were fish. Thus the pond
obtained a traditionary reputation, which circulated
from lip to lip round about. I need not enlarge on
the analogy that exists in this respect between the
pond and various other things.

A SHOOK. 65

By implication it was evidently as much understood
and accepted on the other hand that there was nothing
in the stream. Thus I reasoned it out, sitting under
the aspen, and yet somehow the general opinion did
not satisfy me. There must be something in so sweet
a stream. The sedges by the shore, the flags in the
shallow, slowly swaying from side to side with the
current, the sedge-reedlings calling, the moorhens
and water-rats, all gave an air of habitation.

One morning, looking very gently over the parapet
of the bridge (down stream) into the shadowy depth
beneath, just as my eyes began to see the bottom,
something like a short thick dark stick drifted out
from the arch, somewhat sideways. Instead of pro-
ceeding with the current, it had hardly cleared the
arch when it took a position parallel to the flowing
water and brought up. It was thickest at the end
that faced the stream ; at the other there was a slight
motion as if caused by the current against a flexible
membrane, as it sways a flag. Gazing down intently
into the shadow the colour of the sides of the fish
appeared at first not exactly uniform, and presently
these indistinct differences resolved themselves into
spots. It was a trout, perhaps a pound and a half in
weight.

His position was at the side of the arch, out of the
rush of the current, and almost behind the pier, but
where he could see anything that came floating along
under the culvert. Immediately above him but not
over was the mass of weeds tangled in the dead branch.
Thus in the shadow of the bridge and in the darkness
under the weeds he might easily have escaped notice.

F

66 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

He was, too, extremely wary. The slightest motion
was enough to send him instantly under the arch ;
his cover was but a foot distant, and a trout shoots
twelve inches in a fraction of time.

The summer advanced, the hay was carted, and
the wheat ripened. Already here and there the
reapers had cut portions of the more forward corn.
As I sat from time to time under the aspen, within
hearing of the murmuring water, the thought did rise
occasionally that it was a pity to leave the trout there
till some one blundered into the knowledge of his
existence.

There were ways and means by which he could be
withdrawn without any noise or publicity. But, then,
what would be the pleasure of securing him, the
fleeting pleasure of an hour, compared to the delight
of seeing him almost day by day ? I watched him for
many weeks, taking great precautions that no one
should observe how continually I looked over into the
water there. Sometimes after a glance I stood with
my back to the wall as if regarding an object on the
other side. If any one was following me, or appeared
likely to peer over the parapet, I carelessly struck the
top of the wall with my stick in such a manner that
it should project, an action sufficient to send the fish
under the arch. Or I raised my hat as if heated, and
swung it so that it should alarm him.

If the coast was clear when I had looked at him
still I never left without sending him under the arch
in order to increase his alertness. It was a relief to
know that so many persons who went by wore tall
hats, a safeguard against their seeing anything, for if

A BEOOK. €7

they approached the shadow of the tall hat reached
out beyond the shadow of the parapet, and was
enough to alarm him before they could look over. So
the summer passed, and, though never free from
apprehensions, to my great pleasure without discovery.

68 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

A LONDON TROUT.

THE sword-flags are rusting at their edges, and
their sharp points are turned. On the matted and
entangled sedges lie the scattered leaves which every
rush of the October wind hurries from the boughs.
Some fall on the water and float slowly with the current,
brown and yellow spots on the dark surface. The
grey willows bend to the breeze ; soon the osier beds
will look reddish as the wands are stripped by the
gusts. Alone the thick polled alders remain green,
and in their shadow the brook is still darker. Through
a poplar's thin branches the wind sounds as in the
rigging of a ship ; for the rest, it is silence.

The thrushes have not forgotten the frost of the
morning, and will not sing at noon; the summer
visitors have flown, and the moorhens feed quietly.
The plantation by the brook is silent, for the sedges,
though they have drooped and become entangled, are
not dry and sapless yet to rustle loudly. They will
rustle dry enough next spring, when the sedge-birds
come. A long withey-bed borders the brook, and is
more resorted to by sedge-reedlings, or sedge-birds,
as they are variously called, than any place I know,
even in the remotest country.

A LONDON TROUT. 69

Generally it has been difficult to see them, because
the withey is in leaf when they come, and the leaves
and sheaves of innumerable rods hide them, while the
ground beneath is covered by a thick growth of sedges
and flags, to which the birds descend. It happened
once, however, that the withey stoles had been
polled, and in the spring the boughs were short and
small. At the same time, the easterly winds checked
the sedges, so that they were hardly half their height,
and the flags were thin, and not much taller, when
the sedge-birds came, so that they for once found but
little cover, and could be seen to advantage.

There could not have been less than fifteen in the
plantation, two frequented some bushes beside a pond
near by, some stayed in scattered willows farther down
the stream. They sang so much they scarcely seemed
to have time to feed. While approaching one that
was singing by gently walking on the sward by the
road-side, or where thick dust deadened the footsteps,
suddenly another would commence in the low thorn
hedge on a branch, so near that it could be touched
with a walking stick. Yet though so near the bird
was not wholly visible — he was partly concealed
behind a fork of the bough. This is a habit of the
sedge-birds. Not in the least timid, they chatter
at your elbow, and yet always partially hidden.

If in the withey, they choose a spot where the rods
cross or bunch together. If in the sedges, though so
close it seems as if you could reach forward and catch
him, he is behind the stalks. To place some obstruc-
tion between themselves and any one passing is their
custom ; but that spring, as the foliage was so thin,

70 NATUEE NEAR LONDON.

it only needed a little dexterity in peering to get a
view. The sedge-bird perches aside, on a sloping
willow rod, and, slightly raising his head, chatters,
turning his bill from side to side. He is a very tiny
bird, and his little eye looks out from under a
yellowish streak. His song at first sounds nothing
but chatter.

After listening a while the ear finds a scale in it—
an arrangement and composition — so that, though still
a chatter, it is a tasteful one. At intervals he inter-
sperses a chirp, exactly the same as that of the
sparrow, a chirp with a tang in it. Strike a piece of
metal, and besides the noise of the blow, there is
a second note, or tang. The sparrow's chirp has such
a note sometimes, and the sedge-bird brings it in —
tang, tang, tang. This sound has given him his
country name of brook-sparrow, and it rather spoils
his song. Often the moment he has concluded he
starts for another willow stole, and as he flies begins
to chatter when half way across, and finishes on a
fresh branch.

But long before this another bird has commenced
to sing in a bush adjacent ; a third takes it up in the
thorn hedge ; a fourth in the bushes across the pond ;
and from farther down the stream comes a faint and
distant chatter. Ceaselessly the competing gossip
goes on the entire day and most of the night ; indeed
sometimes all night through. On a warm spring
morning, when the sunshine pours upon the willows,
and even the white dust of the road is brighter,
bringing out the shadows in clear definition, their
lively notes and quick motions make a pleasant com-

A LONDON TROUT. 71

mentary on the low sound of the stream rolling round
the curve.

A moorhen's call comes from the hatch. Broad
yellow petals of marsh-marigold stand up high among
the sedges rising from the greyish-green ground,
which is covered with a film of sun-dried aquatic grass
left dry by the retiring waters. Here and there are
lilac-tinted cuckoo-flowers, drawn up on taller stalks
than those that grow in the meadows. The black
flowers of the sedges are powdered with yellow pollen ;
and dark green sword-flags are beginning to spread
their fans. But just across the road, on the topmost
twigs of birch poles, swallows twitter in the tenderest
tones to their loves. From the oaks in the meadows
on that side titlarks mount above the highest bough
and then descend, sing, sing, singing, to the grass.

A jay calls in a circular copse in the midst of the
meadow ; solitary rooks go over to their nests in the
elms on the hill ; cuckoos call, now this way and now
that, as they travel round. While leaning on the grey
and lichen-hung rails by the brook, the current glides
by, and it is the motion of the water and its low
murmur which renders the place so idle ; the sun-
beams brood, the air is still but full of song. Let us,
too, stay and watch the petals fall one by one from
a wild apple and float down on the stream.

But now in autumn the haws are red on the thorn,
the swallows are few as they were in the earliest
spring ; the sedge-birds have flown, and the redwings
will soon be here. The sharp points of the sword-flags
are turned, their edges rusty, the forget-me-nots are
gone. October's winds are too searching for us to

72 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

linger beside the brook, but still it is pleasant to pass
by and remember the summer days. For the year is
never gone by; in a moment we can recall the
sunshine we enjoyed in May, the roses we gathered in
June, the first wheatear we plucked as the green corn
filled. Other events go by and are forgotten, and
even the details of our own lives, so immensely
important to us at the moment, in time fade from the
memory till the date we fancied we should never
forget has to be sought in a diary. But the year is
always with us ; the months are familiar always ;
they have never gone by.

So with the red haws around and the rustling
leaves it is easy to recall the flowers. The withey
plantation here is full of flowers in summer ; yellow
iris flowers in June when midsummer comes, for the
iris loves a thunder- shower. The flowering flag
spreads like a fan from the root, the edges overlap
near the ground, and the leaves are broad as sword-
blades, indeed the plant is one of the largest that
grows wild. It is quite different from the common
flag with three grooves — bayonet shape — which
appears in every brook. The yellow iris is much
more local, and in many country streams may be
sought for in vain, so that so fine a display as may
be seen here seemed almost a discovery to me.

They were finest in the year of rain, 1879, that
terrible year which is fresh in the memory of all who
have any interest in out-of-door matters. At mid-
summer the plantation was aglow with iris bloom.
The large yellow petals were everywhere high above
the sedge ; in one place a dozen, then two or three,

A LONDON TROUT. 73

then one by itself, then another bunch. The marsh
was a foot deep in water, which could only be seen
by parting the stalks of the sedges, for it was quite
hidden under them. Sedges and flags grew so thick
that everything was concealed except the yellow bloom
above.

One bunch grew on a bank raised a few inches above
the flood which the swollen brook had poured in, and
there I walked among them ; the leaves came nearly
up to the shoulder, the golden flowers on the stalks
stood equally high. It was a thicket of iris. Never
before had they risen to such a height ; it was like
the vegetation of tropical swamps, so much was every-
thing drawn up by the continual moisture. Who
could have supposed that such a downpour as occurred
that summer would have had the effect it had upon
flowers ? Most would have imagined that the ex-
cessive rain would have destroyed them; yet never
was there such floral beauty as that year. Meadow
orchis, buttercups, the yellow iris, all the spring
flowers came forth in extraordinary profusion. The
hay was spoiled, the farmers ruined, but their fields
were one broad expanse of flower.

As that spring was one of the wettest, so that of
the year in present view was one of the driest, and
hence the plantation between the lane and the brook
was accessible, the sedges and flags short, and the
sedge-birds visible. There is a beech in the plan-
tation standing so near the verge of the stream that
its boughs droop over. It has a number of twigs
around the stem — as a rule the beechbole is clear of
boughs, but some which are of rather stunted growth

74 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

are fringed with them. The leaves on the longer
boughs above fall off and voyage down the brook,
but those on the lesser twigs beneath, and only a
little way from the ground, remain on, and rustle,
dry and brown, all through the winter.

Under the shelter of these leaves, and close to the
trunk, there grew a plant of flag — the tops of the
flags almost reached to the leaves — and all the winter
through, despite the frosts for which it was remark-
able, despite the snow and the bitter winds which
followed, this plant remained green and fresh. From
this beech in the morning a shadow stretches to a
bridge across the brook, and in that shadow my trout
used to lie. The bank under the drooping boughs
forms a tiny cliff a foot high, covered with moss, and
here I once observed shrew mice diving and racing
about. But only once, though I frequently passed
the spot ; it is curious that I did not see them
afterwards.

Just below the shadow of the beech there is a
sandy oozy shore, where the footprints of moorhens
are often traceable. Many of the trees of the plan-
tation stand in water after heavy rain ; their leaves
drop into it in autumn, and, being away from the
influence of the current, stay and soak, and lie
several layers thick. Their edges overlap, red, brown,
and pale yellow, with the clear water above and
shadows athwart it, and dry white grass at the verge.
A horse-chestnut drops its fruit in the dusty road;
high above its leaves are tinted with scarlet.

It was at the tail of one of the arches of the bridge
over the brook that my favourite trout used to lie.

A LONDON TEOUT. 7&

Sometimes the shadow of the beech came as far as
his haunts, that was early in the morning, and for
the rest of the day the bridge itself cast a shadow.
The other parapet faces the south, and looking down
from it the bottom of the brook is generally visible,
because the light is so strong. At the bottom a green
plant may be seen waving to and fro in summer as
the current sways it. It is not a weed or flag, but a
plant with pale green leaves, and looks as if it had
come there by some chance; this is the water-
parsnip.

By the shore on this, the sunny side of the bridge,
a few forget-me-nots grow in their season, water crow's-
foot flowers, flags lie along the surface and slowly
swing from side to side like a boat at anchor. The
breeze brings a ripple, and the sunlight sparkles on
it; the light reflected dances up the piers of the
bridge. Those that pass along the road are naturally
drawn to this bright parapet where the brook winds
brimming full through green meadows. You can see
right to the bottom ; you can see where the rush of
the water has scooped out a deeper channel under the
arches, but look as long as you like there are no fish.

The trout I watched so long, and with such pleasure,
was always on the other side, at the tail of the arch,
waiting for whatever might come through to him.
There in perpetual shadow he lay in wait, a little at
the side of the arch, scarcely ever varying his position
except to dart a yard up under the bridge to seize
anything he fancied, and drifting out again to bring
up at his anchorage. If people looked over the
parapet that side they did not see him ; they could

76 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

not see the bottom there for the shadow, or if the
summer noonday cast a strong beam even then it
seemed to cover the surface of the water with a film
of light which could not be seen through. There are
some aspects from which even a picture hung on the
wall close at hand cannot be seen. So no one saw
the trout; if any one more curious leant over the
parapet he was gone in a moment under the arch.

Folk fished in the pond about the verge of which
the sedge-birds chattered, and but a few yards distant ;
but they never looked under the arch on the northern
and shadowy side, where the water flowed beside the
beech. For three seasons this continued. For three
summers I had the pleasure to see the trout day after
day whenever I walked that way, and all that time,
with fishermen close at hand, he escaped notice,
though the place was not preserved. It is wonderful
to think how difficult it is to see anything under one's
very eyes, and thousands of people walked actually
and physically right over the fish.

However, one morning in the third summer, I
found a fisherman standing in the road and fishing
over the parapet in the shadowy water. But he was
fishing at the wrong arch, and only with paste for
roach. While the man stood there fishing, along
came two navvies ; naturally enough they went quietly
up to see what the fisherman was doing, and one
instantly uttered an exclamation. He had seen the
trout. The man who was fishing with paste had
stood so still and patient that the trout, re-assured,
had come out, and the navvy — trust a navvy to see
anything of the kind — caught sight of him.

A LONDON TROUT. * 77

The navvy knew how to see through water. He told
the fisherman, and there was a stir of excitement, a
changing of hooks and bait. I could not stay to see
the result, but went on, fearing the worst. But he
did not succeed ; next day the wary trout was there
still, and the next, and the next. Either this
particular fisherman was not able to come again, or
was discouraged ; at any rate, he did not try again.
The fish escaped, doubtless more wary than ever.

In the spring of the next year the trout was still
there, and up to the summer I used to go and glance
at him. This was the fourth season, and still he
was there; I took friends to look at this wonderful
fish, which defied all the loafers and poachers, and
above all, surrounded himself not only with the
shadow of the bridge, but threw a mental shadow
over the minds of passers-by, so that they never
thought of the possibility of such a thing as trout.
But one morning something happened. The brook
was dammed up on the sunny side of the bridge, and
the water let off by a side-hatch, that some accursed
main or pipe or other horror might be laid across the
bed of the stream somewhere far down.

Above the bridge there was a brimming broad
brook, below it the flags lay on the mud, the weeds
drooped, and the channel was dry. It was dry up to
the beech tree. There, under the drooping boughs
of the beech, was a small pool of muddy water,
perhaps two yards long, and very narrow — a stagnant
muddy pool, not more than three or four inches deep.
In this I saw the trout. In the shallow water, his
back came up to the surface (for his fins must have

78 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

touched the mud sometimes) — once it came above
the surface, and his spots showed as plain as if you
had held him in your hand. He was swimming
round to try and find out the reason of this sudden
stinting of room.

Twice he heaved himself somewhat on his side over
a dead branch that was at the bottom, and exhibited
.all his beauty to the air and sunshine. Then he
went away into another part of the shallow and was
hidden by the muddy water. Now under the arch of
•the bridge, his favourite arch, close by there was a
-deep pool, for, as already mentioned, the scour of the
current scooped away the sand and made a hole there.
When the stream was shut off by the dam above this
hole remained partly full. Between this pool and
the shallow under the beech there was sufficient
-connection for the fish to move into it.

My only hope was that he would do so, and as
some showers fell, temporarily increasing the depth
of the narrow canal between the two pools, there
seemed every reason to believe that he had got to
that under the arch. If now only that accursed pipe
or main, or whatever repair it was, could only be
finished quickly, even now the trout might escape !
Every day my anxiety increased, for the intelligence
would soon get about that the brook was dammed
up, and any pools left in it would be sure to attract
attention.

Sunday came, and directly the bells had done
ringing four men attacked the pool under the arch.
They took off shoes and stockings and waded in, two
at each end of the arch. Stuck in the mud close by

A LONDON TROUT. 79

was an eel-spear. They churned up the mud, wading
in, and thickened and darkened it as they groped
under. No one could watch these barbarians longer.

Is it possible that he could have escaped? He
was a wonderful fish, wary and quick. Is it just
possible that they may not even have known that a
trout was there at all; but have merely hoped for
perch, or tench, or eels ? The pool was deep and the
fish quick — they did not bale it, might he have
escaped? Might they even, if they did find him,
have mercifully taken him and placed him alive in
some other water nearer their homes ? Is it possible
that he may have almost miraculously made his way
down the stream into other pools ?

There was very heavy rain one night, which might
have given him such a chance. These " mights,"
and "ifs," and "is it possible'' even now keep alive
some little hope that some day I may yet see him
again. But that was in the early summer. It is
now winter, and the beech has brown spots. Among
the limes the sedges are matted and entangled, the
sword-flags rusty; the rooks are at the acorns, and
the plough is at work in the stubble. I have never
seen him since. I never failed to glance over the
parapet into the shadowy water. Somehow it seemed
to look colder, darker, less pleasant than it used to
do. The spot was empty, and the shrill winds
whistled through the poplars.

80 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

A BARN.

A BROAD red roof of tile is a conspicuous object on the
same road which winds and turns in true crooked
country fashion, with hedgerows, trees, and fields on
both sides, and scarcely a dwelling visible. It is
not, indeed, so crooked as a lane in Gloucestershire,
which I verily believe passes the same tree thrice,
but the curves are frequent enough to vary the view
pleasantly.

Approaching from either direction, on turning a
certain corner a great red roof rises high above the
hedges, and the line of its ridge is seen every way
through the trees. With this old barn, as with so
much of the architecture of former times, the roof is
the most important part. The gables, for instance,
of Elizabethan houses occupy the eye far more than
the walls; and so, too, with the antique halls that
still exist. The roof of this old barn is itself the
building; the roof and the doors, for the sweeping
slope of the tiles comes down within reach of the
hand, while the great doors extend half-way to the
ridge.

By the low black wooden walls a little chaff has
been spilt, and has blown out and mingles with the

A BAEN. 81

dust of the road. Loose straws lie across the foot-
path, trodden flat by passing feet; straws have
wandered across the road and lodged on the mound,
and others have roamed still farther round the corner.
Between the gatepost and the wall that encloses the
rickyard more straws are jammed, and yet more are
borne up by the nettles beneath it.

Mosses have grown over the old red brick wall,
both on the top and following the lines of the mortar,
and bunches of wall grasses flourish along the top.
The wheat, and barley, and hay carted home to the
rickyard contain the seeds of innumerable plants,
many of which, dropping to the ground, come up
next year. The trodden earth round where the ricks
stood seems favourable to their early appearance;
the first poppy blooms here, though its colour is paler
than those which come afterwards in the fields.

In spring most of the ricks are gone, threshed and
sold, but there remains the vast pile of straw — always
straw — and the three-cornered stump of a hay-rick
which displays bands of different hues, one above the
other, like the strata of a geological map. Some of
the hay was put up damp, some in good condition,
and some had been browned by bad weather before
being carted.

About the straw-rick, and over the chaff that
everywhere strews the earth, numerous fowls search,
and by the gateway Chanticleer proudly stands, tall
and upright, the king of the rickyard still, as he and
his ancestors have been these hundreds of years.
Under the granary, which is built on stone staddles,
to exclude the mice, some turkeys are huddled

G

82 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

together calling occasionally for a "halter," and
beyond them the green, glossy neck of a drake
glistens in the sunshine.

When the corn is high, and sometimes before it is
well up, the doors of the barn are daily open, and
shock-headed children peer over the hatch. There
are others within playing and tumbling on a heap of
straw — always straw — which is their bed at night.
The sacks which form their counterpane are rolled
aside, and they have half the barn for their nursery.
If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother
will be there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where
they can see all that goes along the road.

A hundred yards away, in a corner of an arable
field, the very windiest and most draughty that could
be chosen, where the hedge is cut down so that it
can barely be called a hedge, and where the elms
draw the wind, the men of the family crowd over a
smoky fire. In the wind and rain the fire could not
burn at all had they not by means of a stick propped
up a hurdle to windward, and thus sheltered it. As
it is there seems no flame, only white embers and a
flow of smoke, into which the men from time to time
cast the dead wood they have gathered. Here the
pot is boiled and the cooking accomplished at a safe
distance from the litter and straw of the rickyard.

These people are Irish, who come year after year
to the same ham for the hoeing and the harvest,
travelling from the distant West to gather agricultural
wages on the verge of the metropolis.

In fine summer weather, beside the usual business
traffic, there goes past this windy bare corner a

A BARN. 83

constant stream of pleasure seekers, heavily laden
four-in-hands, tandems, dog-carts, equestrians, and
open carriages, filled with well-dressed ladies. They
represent the abundant gold of trade and commerce.
In their careless luxury they do not notice —how
should they? — the smoky fire in the barren corner,
or the shock-headed children staring at the equipages
over the hatch at the barn.

Within a mile there is a similar fire, which by (Jay
is not noticeable, because the spot is under a hedge
two meadows back from the road. At night it shows
brightly, and even as late as eleven o'clock dusky
figures may be seen about it, as if the family slept
in the open air. A third fire is kept up in the same
neighbourhood, but in a different direction, in a
meadow bordering on a lonely lane. There is a
thatched shed behind the hedge, which is the sleeping-
place — the fire burns some forty yards away. Still
another shines at night in an open arable field, where
is a barn.

One day I observed a farmer's courtyard completely
filled with groups of men, women, and children, who
had come travelling round to do the harvesting.
They had with them a small cart or van — not of the
kind which the show folk use as moveable dwellings,
but for the purpose of carrying their pots, pans, and
the like. The greater number carry their burdens on
their backs, trudging afoot.

A gang of ten or twelve once gathered round me
to inquire the direction of some spot they desired
to reach. A powerful-looking woman, with reaping-
hook in her hand and cooking implements over her

84 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

shoulder, was the speaker. The rest did not appear
to know a word of English, and her pronuncia-
tion was so peculiar that it was impossible to under-
stand what she meant except by her gestures. I
suppose she wanted to find a farm, the name of
which I could not get at, and then perceiving she
was not understood her broad face flushed red and
she poured out a flood of Irish in her excitement.
The others chimed in, and the din redoubled. At
last I caught the name of a town and was thus able
to point the way.

About harvest time it is common to meet an Irish
labourer dressed in the national costume: a tall,
upright fellow with a long-tailed coat, breeches, and
worsted stockings. He walks as upright as if drilled,
with a quick easy gait and springy step, quite distinct
from the Saxon stump. When the corn is cut these
bivouac fires go out, and the camp disappears, but
the white ashes remain, and next season the smoke
will rise again.

The barn here with its broad red roof, and the
rickyard with the stone staddles, and the litter of
chaff and straw, is the central rendezvous all the
year of the resident labourers. Day by day, and at
all hours, there is sure to be some of them about
the place. The stamp of the land is on them. They
border on the city, but are as distinctly agricultural
and as immediately recognizable as in the heart of
the country. This sturdy carter, as he comes round
the corner of the straw rick, cannot be mistaken.

He is short and thickly set, a man of some fifty
years, but hard and firm of make. His face is broad

A BAEN. 85

and red, his shiny fat cheeks almost as prominent as
his stumpy nose, likewise red and shiny. A fringe
of reddish whiskers surrounds his chin like a cropped
hedge. The eyes are small and set deeply, a habit
of half-closing the lids when walking in the teeth of
the wind and rain has caused them to appear still
smaller. The wrinkles at the corners and the bushy
eyebrows are more visible and pronounced than the
eyes themselves, which are mere bright grey points
twinkling with complacent good humour.

These red cheeks want but the least motion to
break into a smile; the action of opening the lips
to speak is sufficient to give that expression. The
fur cap he wears allows the round shape of his head
to be seen, and the thick neck which is the colour of
a brick. He trudges deliberately round the straw
rick ; there is something in the style of the man
which exactly corresponds to the barn, and the straw,
and the stone staddles, and the waggons. Could we
Jook back three hundred years, just such a man
would be seen in the midst of the same surround-
ings, deliberately trudging round the straw ricks of
Elizabethan days, calm and complacent though the
Armada be at hand. There are the ricks just the
same, there is the barn, and the horses are in good
case ; the wheat is coming on well. Armies may
march, but these are the same.

When his waggon creaks along the road towards
the town his eldest lad walks proudly by the leader's
head, and two younger boys ride in the vehicle. They
pass under the great elms; now the sunshine and
now the shadow falls upon them ; the horses move

86 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

with measured step and without haste, and both
horses and human folks are content in themselves.

As you sit in summer on the beach and gaze afar
over the blue waters scarcely flecked with foam,
how slowly the distant ship moves along the horizon.
It is almost, but not quite, still. You go to lunch and
return, and the vessel is still there ; what patience
the man at the wheel must have. So, now, resting
here on the stile, see the plough yonder, travelling
as it were with all sails set.

Three shapely horses in line draw the share. The
traces are taut, the swing-tree like a yard braced
square, the helmsman at the tiller bears hard upon
the stilts. But does it move ? The leading horse,
seen distinct against the sky, lifts a hoof and places
it down again, stepping in the last furrow made.
But then there is a perceptible pause before the next
hoof rises, and yet again a perceptible delay in the
pull of the muscles. The stooping ploughman walk-
ing in the new furrow, with one foot often on the
level and the other in the hollow, sways a little
with the lurch of his implement, but barely drifts
ahead.

While watched they scarcely move ; but now look
away for a time and on returning the plough itself
and the lower limbs of the ploughman and the horses
are out of sight. They have gone over a slope, and
are " hull down ; " a few minutes more, and they
disappear behind the ridge. Look away again and
read or dream, as you would on the beach, and then,
see, the head and shoulders of the leading horse are
up, and by and by the plough rises, as they come

A BABN. 87

back on the opposite tack. Thus the long hours
slowly pass.

Intent day after day upon the earth beneath his
feet, or upon the tree in the hedge yonder, by which,
as by a lighthouse, he strikes out a straight furrow,
his mind absorbs the spirit of the land. When the
plough pauses, as he takes out his bread and cheese
in the corner of the field for luncheon, he looks over
the low cropped hedge and sees far off the glitter of
the sunshine on the glass roof of the Crystal Palace.
The light plays and dances on it, flickering as on
rippling water. But, though hard by, he is not of
London. The horses go on again, and his gaze is
bent down upon the furrow.

A mile or so up the road there is a place where it
widens, and broad strips of sward run parallel on
both sides. Beside the path, but just off it, so as to
be no obstruction, an aged man stands watching his
sheep. He has stood there so long that at last the
restless sheep dog has settled down on the grass. He
wears a white smock-frock, and leans heavily on his
long staff, which he holds with both hands, propping
his chest upon it. His face is set in a frame of
white — white hair, white whiskers, short white beard.
It is much wrinkled with years; but still has a
hale and hearty hue.

The sheep are only on their way from one part of
the farm to another, perhaps half a mile ; but they
have already been an hour, and will probably occupy
another, in getting there. Some are feeding steadily ;
some are in a gateway, doing nothing, like their
pastor; if they were on the loneliest slope of the

88 NATURE NEAE LONDON.

Downs he and they could not be more unconcerned.
Carriages go past, and neither the sheep nor the
shepherd turn to look.

Suddenly there comes a hollow booming sound — a
roar, mellowed and subdued by distance, with a
peculiar beat upon the ear, as if a wave struck the
nerve and rebounded and struck again in an infini-
tesimal fraction of time — such a sound as can only
bellow from the mouth of cannon. Another and
another. The big guns at Woolwich are at work.
The shepherd takes no heed — neither he nor his
sheep.

His ears must acknowledge the sound, but his mind
pays no attention. He knows of nothing but his
sheep. You may brush by him along the footpath
and it is doubtful if he sees you. But stay and speak
about the sheep, and instantly he looks you in the
face and answers with interest.

Eound the corner of the straw-rick by the red-
roofed barn there comes another man, this time with
smoke-blackened face, and bringing with him an
odour of cotton waste and oil. He is the driver of
a steam ploughing engine, whose broad wheels in
summer leave their impression in the deep white dust
of the roads, and in moist weather sink into the soil
at the gateways and leave their mark as perfect as in
wax. But though familiar with valves, and tubes,
and gauges, spending his hours polishing brass and
steel, and sometimes busy with spanner and hammer,
his talk, too, is of the fields.

He looks at the clouds, and hopes it will continue
fine enough to work. Like many others of the men

A BAEN. 89

who are employed on the farms about town he came
originally from a little village a hundred miles away,
in the heart of the country. The stamp of the land
is on him, too.

Besides the Irish, who pass in gangs and generally
have a settled destination, many agricultural folk
drift along the roads and lanes searching for work.
They are sometimes alone, or in couples, or they
are a man and his wife, and carry hoes. You
can tell them as far as you can see them, for they
stop and look over every gateway to note how
the crop is progressing, and whether any labour is
required.

On Saturday afternoons, among the crowd of
customers at the shops in the towns, under the very
shadow of the almost palatial villas of wealthy
"City" men, there may be seen women whose dress
and talk at once mark them out as agricultural.
They have come in on foot from distant farms for a
supply of goods, and will return heavily laden. No
town-bred woman, however poor, would dress so
plainly as these cottage matrons. Their daughters
who go with them have caught the finery of the town,
and they do not mean to stay in the cottage.

There is a bleak arable field, on somewhat elevated
ground, not very far from the same old barn. In the
corner of this field for the last two or three years a
great pit of roots has been made : that is, the roots
are piled together and covered with straw and earth.
When this mound is opened in the early spring a
stout, elderly woman takes her seat beside it, bill-
hook in hand, and there she sits the day through

90 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

trimming the roots one by one, and casting those that
she has prepared aside ready to be carted away to
the cattle.

A hurdle or two propped up with stakes, and
against which some of the straw from a mound has
been thrown, keeps off some of the .wind. But the
easterly breezes sweeping over the bare upland must
rush round and over that slight bulwark with force
but little broken. Holding the root in the left hand,
she turns it round and slashes off the projections with
quick blows, which seem to only just miss her fingers,
laughing and talking the while with two children who
have brought her some refreshment, and who roll
and tumble and play about her. The scene might be
bodily removed and set down a hundred miles away,
in the midst of a western county, and would there be
perfectly at one with the surroundings.

Here, as she sits and chops, the east wind brings
the boom of trains continually rolling over an iron
bridge to and from the metropolis. She was there
two successive seasons to my knowledge; she, too,
had the stamp of the land upon her.

The broad sward where the white-haired shepherd
so often stands watching his sheep feeding along to
this field, is decked in summer with many flowers.
By the hedge the agrimony frequently lifts its long
stem, surrounded with small yellow petals. One day
towards autumn I noticed a man looking along a
hedge, and found that he was gathering this plant.
He had a small armful of the straggling stalks,
from which the flowers were then fading. The lierb
once had a medicinal reputation, and, curious to

A BAEN. 91

know if it was still remembered, I asked him the
name of the herb and what it was for. He replied
that it was agrimony: "We makes tea of it, and
it is good for the flesh," or, as he pronounced it,
" fleysh."

92 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

WHEATFIELDS.

THE cornfields immediately without London on the
southern side are among the first to be reaped.
Kegular as if clipped to a certain height, the level
wheat shows the slope of the ground, corresponding
to it, so that the glance travels swiftly and unchecked
across the fields. They scarce seem divided, for the
yellow ears on either side rise as high as the cropped
hedge between.

Ked spots, like larger poppies, now appear above
and now dive down again beneath the golden surface.
These are the red caps worn by some of the reapers ;
some of the girls, too, have a red scarf across the
shoulder or round the waist. By instinctive sym-
pathy the heat of summer requires the contrast of
brilliant hues, of scarlet and gold, of poppy and
wheat.

A girl, as she rises from her stooping position,
turns a face, brown, as if stained with walnut juice,
towards me, the plain gold ring in her brown ear
gleams, so, too, the rings on her finger, nearly black
from the sun, but her dark eyes scarcely pause a
second on a stranger. She is too busy, her tanned
fingers are at work again gathering up the cut wheat.

WHEATFIELDS. , 93

This is no gentle labour, but " hard hand-play," like
that in the battle of the olden time sung by the Saxon
poet.

The ceaseless stroke of the reaping-hook falls on
the ranks of the corn : the corn yields, but only inch
by inch. If the burning sun, or thirst, or weariness
forces the reaper to rest, the fight too stays, the ranks
do not retreat, and victory is only won by countless
blows. The boom of a bridge as a train rolls over
the iron girders resounds, and the brazen dome on the
locomotive is visible for a moment as it passes across
the valley. But no one heeds it — the train goes on
its way to the great city, the reapers abide by their
labour. Men and women, lads and girls, some mere
children, judged by their stature, are plunged as it
were in the wheat.

The few that wear bright colours are seen : the
many who do not are unnoticed. Perhaps the dusky
girl here with the red scarf may have some strain of
the gipsy, some far-off reminiscence of the sunlit East
which caused her to wind it about her. The sheaf
grows under her fingers, it is bound about with a
girdle of twisted stalks, in which mingle the green
bine of convolvulus and the pink-streaked bells that
must fade.

Heat comes down from above ; heat comes up from
beneath, from the dry, white earth, from the rows of
stubble, as if emitted by the endless tubes of cut stalks
pointing upwards. Wheat is a plant of the sun : it
loves the heat, and heat crackles in the rustle of the
straw. The pimpernels above which the hook passed
are wide open : the larger white convolvulus trumpets

94 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

droop languidly on the low hedge : the distant hills
are dim with the vapour of heat; the very clouds
which stay motionless in the sky reflect a yet more
brilliant light from their white edges. Is there no
shadow ?

There is no tree in the field, and the low hedge can
shelter nothing; but bordering the next, on rather
higher ground, is an ash copse, with some few spruce
firs. Besting on a rail in the shadow of these firs, a
light air now and again draws along beside the nut-
tree bushes of the hedge, the cooler atmosphere of the
shadow, perhaps causes it. Faint as it is, it sways the
heavy laden brome grass, but is not strong enough to
lift a ball of thistledown from the bennets among
which it is entangled.

How swiftly the much-desired summer comes upon
us ! Even with the reapers at work before one it is
difficult to realize that it has not only come, but will
soon be passing away. Sweet summer is but just long
enough for the happy loves of the larks. It seems but
yesterday, it is really more than five months since,
that, leaning against the gate there, I watched a lark
and his affianced on the ground among the grey stubble
of last year still standing.

His crest was high and his form upright, he ran a
little way and then sang, went on again and sang
again to his love, moving parallel with him. Then
passing from the old dead stubble to fresh-turned
furrows, still they went side by side, now down in the
valley between the clods, now mounting the ridges, but
always together, always with song and joy, till I lost
them across the brown earth. But even then from

WHEATF1ELDS. 95

time to time came the sweet voice, full of hope in
coming summer.

The day declined, and from the clear, cold sky of
March the moon looked down, gleaming on the smooth
planed furrow where the plough had passed. Scarce
had she faded in the dawn ere the lark sang again,
high in the morning sky. The evenings became dark;
still he rose above the shadows and the dusky earth,
and his song fell from the bosom of the night. With
full untiring choir the joyous host heralded the birth
of the corn; the slender, forceless seedleaves which
came gently up till they had risen above the proud
crests of the lovers.

Time advanced, and the bare mounds about the
field, carefully cleaned by the husbandman, were
covered again with wild herbs and plants, like a
fringe to a garment of pure green. Parsley and
"gix," and clogweed, and sauce-alone, whose white
flowers smell of garlic if crushed in the fingers, came
up along the hedge; by the gateway from the bare
trodden earth appeared the shepherd's purse ; small
must be the coin to go in its seed capsule, and there-
fore it was so called with grim and truthful humour,
for the shepherd, hard as is his work, facing wind and
weather, carries home but little money.

Yellow charlock shot up faster and shone bright
above the corn ; the oaks showered down their green
flowers like moss upon the ground ; the tree pipits
sang on the branches and descending to the wheat.
The rusty chain-harrow, lying inside the gate, all
tangled together, was concealed with grasses. Yonder
the magpies fluttered over the beans among which they

96 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

are always searching in spring ; blackbirds, too, are
fond of a beanfield.

Time advanced again, and afar on the slope bright
yellow mustard flowered, a hill of yellow behind the
elms. The luxuriant purple of trifolium, acres of rich
colour, glowed in the sunlight. There was a scent of
flowering beans, the vetches were in flower, and the
peas which clung together for support — the stalk of
the pea goes through the leaf as a painter thrusts his
thumb through his palette. Under the edge of the
footpath through the wheat a wild pansy blooms.

Standing in the gateway beneath the shelter of the
elms as the clouds come over, it is pleasant to hear
the cool refreshing rain come softly down ; the green
wheat drinks it as it falls, so that hardly a drop reaches
the ground, and to-morrow it will be as dry as ever.
Wood pigeons call from the hedges, and blackbirds
whistle in the trees ; the sweet delicious rain refreshes
them as it does the corn.

Thunder mutters in the distance, and the electric
atmosphere rapidly draws the wheat up higher. A
few days sunshine and the first wheatear appears.
Very likely there are others near, but standing with
their hood of green leaf towards you, and therefore
hidden. As the wheat comes into ear it is garlanded
about with hedges in full flower.

It is midsummer, and midsummer, like a bride, is
decked in white. On the high -reaching briars white
June roses ; white flowers on the lowly brambles ;
broad white umbels of elder in the corner, and white
cornels blooming under the elm ; honeysuckle hang-
ing creamy white coronals round the ash boughs;

WHEATFIELDS. 97

white meadow-sweet flowering on the shore of the
ditch ; white clover, too, beside the gateway. As
spring is azure and purple, so midsummer is white,
and autumn golden. Thus the coming out of the
wheat into ear is marked and welcomed with the
•purest colour.

But these, though the most prominent along the
hedge, are not the only flowers ; the prevalent white
is embroidered with other hues. The brown feathers
of a few reeds growing where the furrows empty the
showers into the ditch, wave above the corn. Among
the leaves of mallow its mauve petals are sheltered
from the sun. On slender stalks the yellow vetchling
blooms, reaching ambitiously as tall as the lowest
of the brambles. Bird's-foot lotus, with red claws,
is overtopped by the grasses.

The elm has a fresh green — it has put forth its
second or midsummer shoot; the young leaves of
the aspen are white, and the tree as the wind
touches it seems to turn grey. The furrows run to
the ditch under the reeds, the ditch declines to a
little streamlet which winds all hidden by willowherb
and rush and flag, a mere trickle of water under
brooklime, away at the feet of the corn. In the
shadow, deep down beneath the crumbling bank
which is only held up by the roots of the grasses,
is a forget-me-not, with a tiny circlet of yellow in the
centre of its petals.

The coming of the ears of wheat forms an era and
a date, a fixed point in the story of the summer. It
is then that, soon after dawn, the clear sky assumes
the delicate and yet luscious purple which seems to

H

98 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

shine through the usual atmosphere, as if its former
blue became translucent, and an inner and ethereal
light of colour was shown. As the sun rises higher
the brilliance of his rays overpowers it, and even at
midsummer it is but rarely seen.

The morning sky is often, too, charged with saffron,
or the blue is clear, but pale, and the sunrise might
be watched for many mornings without the appearance
of this exquisite hue. Once seen, it will ever be
remembered. Upon the Downs in early autumn,
as the vapours clear away, the same colour occa-
sionally gleams from the narrow openings of blue
sky. But at midsummer, above the opening wheat-
ears, the heaven from the east to the zenith is flushed
with it.

At noonday, as the light breeze comes over, the
wheat rustles the more because the stalks are
stiffening and swing from side to side from the root
instead of yielding up the stem. Stay now at every
gateway and lean over while the midsummer hum
sounds above. It is a peculiar sound, not like the
querulous buzz of the honey, nor the drone of the
humble bee, but a sharp ringing resonance like that
of a tuning-fork. Sometimes, in the far away country
where it is often much louder, the folk think it has
a threatening note.

Here the barley has taken a different tint now the
beard is out ; here the oats are straggling forth from
their sheath; here a pungent odour of mustard in
flower comes on the air ; there a poppy faints with
broad petals flung back and drooping, unable to uphold
its gorgeous robes. The flower of the field pea, here

WHEATFIELDS. 99

again, would make a model for a lady's hat ; so would
a butterfly with closed wings on the verge of a leaf ;
so would the broom blossom, or the pink flower of the
restharrow. This hairy caterpillar, creeping along
the hawthorn, which if touched, immediately coils
itself in a ring, very recently was thought a charm
in distant country places for some diseases of child-
hood, if hung about the neck. Hedge mustard, yellow
and ragged and dusty, stands by the gateway.

In the evening, as the dew gathers on the grass,
which feels cooler to the hand some time before an
actual deposit, the clover and vetches close their
leaves — the signal the hares have been waiting for to
venture from the sides of the fields where they have
been cautiously roaming, and take bolder strolls
across the open and along the lanes. The aspens
rustle louder in the stillness of the evening; their
leaves not only sway to and fro, but semi-rotate upon
the stalks, which causes their scintillating appearance.
The stars presently shine from the pale blue sky, and
the wheat shimmers dimly white beneath them.

So time advances till to-day, watching the reapers
from the shadow of the copse, it seems as if within
that golden expanse there must be something hidden,
could you but rush in quickly and seize it — some
treasure of the sunshine ; and there is a treasure, the
treasure of life stored in those little grains, the slow
product of the sun. But it cannot be grasped in an
impatient moment — it must be gathered with labour.
I have threshed out in my hand three ears of the ripe
wheat : how many foot-pounds of human energy do
these few light grains represent ?

100 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

The roof of the Crystal Palace yonder gleams and'
sparkles this afternoon as if it really were crystal
under the bright rays. But it was concealed by
mist when the ploughs in the months gone by were
guided in these furrows by men, hard of feature and
of hand, stooping to their toil. The piercing east
wind scattered the dust in clouds, looking at a dis-
tance like small rain across the field, when grey-coated
men, grey too of beard, followed the red drill to and
fro.

How many times the horses stayed in this sheltered
corner while the ploughmen and their lads ate their
crusts ! How many times the farmer and the bailiff,
with hands behind their backs, considering, walked
along the hedge taking counsel of the earth if they
had done right ! How many times hard gold and
silver was paid over at the farmer's door for labour
while yet the plant was green ; how many considering
cups of ale were emptied in planning out the future
harvest !

Now it is come, and still more labour — look at the
reapers yonder — and after that more time and more
labour before the sacks go to the market. Hard toil
and hard fare : the bread which the reapers have
brought with them for their luncheon is hard and dry,
the heat has dried it like a chip. In the corner of
the field the women have gathered some sticks and
lit a fire — the flame is scarce seen in the sunlight,
and the sticks seem eaten away as they burn by some
invisible power. They are boiling a kettle, and their
bread, too, which they will soak in the tea, is dry and
chip -like. Aside, on the ground by the hedge, is a

WHEAT FIELDS. 101

handkerchief tied at the corners, with a few mush-
rooms in it.

The scented clover field — the white campions dot it
here and there — yields a rich, nectarous food for ten
thousand bees, whose hum conies together with its
odour on the air. But these men and women and
children ceaselessly toiling know no such sweets ;
their food is as hard as their labour. How many
foot-pounds, then, of human energy do these grains
in my hand represent? Do they not in their little
compass contain the potentialities, the past and the
future, of human life itself ?

Another train booms across the iron bridge in the
hollow. In a few hours now the carriages will be
crowded with men hastening home from their toil in
the City. The narrow streak of sunshine which day
by day falls for a little while upon the office floor,
yellowed by the dingy pane, is all, perhaps, to remind
them of the sun and sky, of the forces of nature ; and
that little is unnoticed. The pressure of business is
so severe in these later days that in the hurry and
excitement it is not wonderful many should forget that
the world is not comprised in the court of a City
thoroughfare.

Kapt and absorbed in discount and dollars, in bills
and merchandise, the over-strung mind deems itself
all — the body is forgotten, the physical body, which is
subject to growth and change, just as the plants and
the very grass of the field. But there is a subtle
connection between the physical man and the great
nature which comes pressing up so closely to the
metropolis. He still depends in the nineteenth

102 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

century, as in the dim ages before the Pyramids, upon
this tiny yellow grain here, rubbed out from the ear
of wheat. The clever mechanism of the locomotive
which bears him to and fro, week after week and
month after month, from home to office and from
office home, has not rendered him in the least degree
independent of this.

But it is no wonder that these things are forgotten
in the daily struggle of London. And if the merchant
spares an abstracted glance from the morning or
evening newspaper out upon the fields from the
carriage window, the furrows of the field can have
but little meaning. Each looks to him exactly alike.
To the farmers and the labourer such and such a
furrow marks an acre and has its bearing, but to
the passing glance it is not so. The work in the
field is so slow; the passenger by rail sees, as
it seems to him, nothing going on ; the corn may
sow itself almost for all that is noteworthy in ap-
parent labour.

Thus it happens that, although the cornfields and
the meadows come so closely up to the offices and
warehouses of mighty London, there is a line and
mark in the minds of men between them ; the man
of merchandise does not see what the man of the
field sees, though both may pass the same acres
every morning. It is inevitable that it should be so.
It is easy in London to forget that it is midsummer,
till, going some day into Covent-garden Market, you
see baskets of the cornflower, or blue-bottle as it is
called in the country, ticketed " Corinne," and offered
for sale. The lovely azure of the flower recalls the

WHEATFIELDS. 103

scene where it was first gathered long since at the
edge of the wheat.

By the copse here now the teazles lift their spiny
heads high in the hedge, the young nuts are browning,
the wild mints flowering on the shores of the ditch,
and the reapers are cutting ceaselessly at the ripe
corn. The larks have brought their loves to a happy
conclusion. Besides them, the wheat in its day has
sheltered many other creatures — both animals and
birds.

Hares raced about it in the spring, and even in
the May sunshine might be seen rambling over the
slopes. As it grew higher it hid the leverets and
the partridge chicks. Toll has been taken by
rook, and sparrow, and pigeon. Enemies, too, have
assailed it ; the daring couch invaded it, the bind-
weed climbed up the stalk, the storm rushed along
and beat it down. Yet it triumphed, and to-day the
full sheaves lean against each other.

104 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

THE CROWS.

ON one side of the road immediately after quitting
the suburb there is a small cover of furze. The
spines are now somewhat browned by the summer
heats, and the fern which grows about every bush
trembles on the balance of colour between green and
yellow. Soon, too, the tall wiry grass will take a
warm brown tint, which gradually pales as the
autumn passes into winter, and finally bleaches to
greyish white.

Looking into the furze from the footpath, there are
purple traces here and there at the edge of the fern
where the heath-bells hang. On a furze branch,
which projects above the rest, a furze chat perches,
with yellow blossom above and beneath him. Bushes
mark the margin of small pools and marshy spots,
so overhung with brambles and birch branches, and
so closely surrounded by gorse, that they would not
otherwise be noticed.

But the thick growth of rushes intimates that water
is near, and upon parting the bushes a little may
be seen, all that has escaped evaporation in the
shade. From one of these marshy spots I once — and
once only — observed a snipe rise, and after wheeling

THE CROWS. 105

round return and settle by another. As the wiry
grass becomes paler with the fall of the year, the
rushes, on the contrary, from green become faintly
yellow, and presently brownish. Grey grass and
brown rushes, dark furze, and fern almost copper in
hue from frost, when lit up by a gleam of winter
sunshine, form a pleasant breadth of warm colour in
the midst of bare fields.

After continuous showers in spring, lizards are often
found in the adjacent gardens, their dark backs as
they crawl over the patches being almost exactly the
tint of the moist earth. If touched, the tail is im-
mediately coiled, the body stiffens, and the creature
appears dead. They are popularly supposed to
come from the furze, which is also believed to shelter
adders.

There is, indeed, scarcely a cover in Surrey and
Kent which is not said to have its adders ; the
gardeners employed at villas close to the metropolis
occasionally raise an alarm, and profess to have seen
a viper in the shrubberies, or the ivy, or under an old
piece of bast. Since so few can distinguish at a
glance between the common snake and the adder it
is as well not to press too closely upon any reptile
that may chance to be heard rustling in the grass,
and to strike tussocks with the walking stick before
sitting down to rest, for the adder is only dangerous
when unexpectedly encountered.

In the roadside ditch by the furze the figwort grows,
easily known by its coarse square stem; and the
woody bines, if so they may be called, or stalks of
bitter-sweet, remain all the winter standing in the

106 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

hawthorn hedge. The first frosts, on the other hand,,
shrivel the bines of white bryony, which part and
hang separated, and in the spring a fresh bine pushes
up with greyish green leaves, and tendrils feeling for
support. It is often observed that the tendrils of this
bryony coil both ways, with and against the sun.

But it must be remembered in looking for this that
it is the same tendril which should be examined, and
not two different ones. It will then be seen that the
tendril, after forming a spiral one way, lengthens
out like a tiny green wax taper, and afterwards turns
the other. Sometimes it resumes the original turn
before reaching a branch to cling to, and may thus
be said to have revolved in three directions. The
dusty celandine grows under the bushes; and its
light green leaves seem to retain the white dust
from the road. Ground ivy creeps everywhere over
the banks, and covers the barest spot. In April
its flowers, though much concealed by leaves, dot
the sides of the ditches with colour, like the purple
tint that lurks in the amethyst.

A small black patch marks the site of one of those
gorse fires which are so common in Surrey. This
was extinguished before it could spread beyond a few
bushes. The crooked stems remain black as char-
coal, too much burnt to recover, and in the centre a
young birch, scorched by the flames stands leafless.
This barren birch, bare of foliage and apparently
unattractive, is the favourite resort of yellow-hammers.
Perching on a branch towards evening a yellow-
hammer will often sit and sing by the hour together,,
as if preferring to be clear of leafy sprays.

THE CBOWS. 107

The somewhat dingy hue of many trees as the
summer begins to wane is caused not only by the
fading of the green, but by the appearance of spots
upon the leaves, as may be seen on those birches
which grow among the furze. But in spring and
early summer their fresh light green contrasts with
masses of bright yellow gorse bloom. Just before
then— just as the first leaves are opening — the chiff-
chaffs come.

The first spring I had any knowledge of this spot
was mild, and had been preceded by mild seasons.
The chiffchaffs arrived all at once, as it seemed, in a
bevy, and took possession of every birch about the
furze, calling incessantly with might and main. The
willow-wrens were nearly as numerous. All the gorse
seemed full of them for a few days. Then by degrees
they gradually spread abroad, and dispersed among
the hedges.

But in the following springs nothing of the kind
occurred. Chiffchaff and willow-wren came as usual,
but they did not arrive in a crowd at once. This may
have been owing to the flight going elsewhere, or
possibly the flock were diminished by failure to rear
the young broods in so drenching a season as 1879,
which would explain the difference observed next
spring. There was no scarcity, but there was a lack
of the bustle and excitement and flood of song that
accompanied their advent two years before.

Upon a piece of waste land at the corner of the
furze a very large cinder and dust-heap was made by
carting refuse there from the neighbouring suburb.
During the sharp and continued frosts of the winter

108 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

this dust-heap was the resort of almost every species
of bird — sparrows, starlings, greenfinches, and rooks
searching for any stray morsels of food. Some bird-
catchers soon noticed this concourse, and spread their
nets among the adjacent rushes, but fortunately with
little success.

I say fortunately, not because I fear the extinction
of small birds, but because of the miserable fate that
awaits the captive. Far better for the frightened little
creature to have its neck at once twisted and to die
than to languish in cages hardly large enough for it to
turn in behind the dirty panes of the windows in the
Seven Dials.

The happy greenfinch — I use the term of fore-
thought, for the greenfinch seems one of the very
happiest of birds in the hedges — accustomed during
all its brief existence to wander in company with
friends from bush to bush and tree to tree, must
literally pine its heart out. Or it may be streaked
with bright paint and passed on some unwary person
for a Java sparrow or a "blood-heart."

The little boy who dares to take a bird's nest is
occasionally fined and severely reproved. The ruffian-
like crew who go forth into the pastures and lanes
about London, snaring and netting full-grown birds
by the score, are permitted to ply their trade un-
checked. I mean to say that there is no comparison
between the two things. An egg has not yet advanced
to consciousness or feeling : the old birds, if their
nest is taken, frequently build another. The lad has
to hunt for the nest, to climb for it or push through
thorns, and may be pricked by brambles and stung

THE CEOWS. 100

by nettles. In a degree there is something to him
approaching to sport in nesting.

But these bird-catchers simply stand by the ditch
with their hands in their pockets sucking a stale pipe.
They would rather lounge there in the bitterest north-
east wind that ever blew than do a single hour's
honest work. Blackguard is written in their faces.
The poacher needs some courage, at least ; he knows a
penalty awaits detection. These fellows have no idea
of sport, no courage, and no skill, for their tricks are
simplicity itself, nor have they the pretence of utility,
for they do not catch birds for the good of the farmers
or the market gardeners, but merely that they may
booze without working for the means.

Pity it is that any one can be found to purchase the
product of their brutality. No one would do so could
they but realize the difference to the captive upon
which they are lavishing their mistaken love, between
the cage, the alternately hot and cold room (as the
fire goes out at night), the close atmosphere and
fumes that lurk near the ceiling, and the open air
and freedom to which it was born.

The rooks only came to the dust-heap in hard
weather, and ceased to visit it so soon as the ground
relaxed and the ploughs began to move. But a couple
of crows looked over the refuse once during the day
for months till men came to sift the cinders. These
crows are permanent residents. Their rendezvous is a
copse, only separated from the furze by the highway.

They are always somewhere near, now in the
ploughed fields, now in the furze, and during the
severe frosts of last winter in the road itself, so

110 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

sharply driven by hunger as to rise very unwillingly
on the approach of passengers. A meadow opposite
the copse is one of their favourite resorts. There are
anthills, rushes, and other indications of not too rich
.a soil in this meadow, and in places the prickly rest-
harrow grows among the grass, bearing its pink flower
in summer. Perhaps the coarse grass and poor soil
are productive of grubs and insects, for not only the
crows, but the rooks, continually visit it.

One spring, hearing a loud chattering in the copse,
and recognizing the alarm notes of the missel-thrush,
I cautiously crept up the hedge, and presently found
three crows up in a birch tree, just above where the
thrushes were calling. The third crow — probably a
descendant of the other two — had joined in a raid
upon the missel-thrushes' brood. Both defenders and
assailants were in a high state of excitement ; the
thrushes screeching, and the crows, in a row one
above the other on a branch, moving up and down
it in a restless manner. I fear they had succeeded
in their purpose, for no trace of the young birds was
visible.

The nest of the missel-thrush is so frequently singled
out for attack by crows that it would seem the young
birds must possess a peculiar and attractive flavour ;
or is it because they are large ? There are more crows
round London than in a whole county, where the
absence of manufactures and the rural quiet would
seem favourable to bird life. The reason, of course,
is that in the country the crows frequenting woods are
shot and kept down as much as possible by game-
keepers.

THE CROWS. Ill

In the immediate environs of London keepers are
not about, and even a little further away the land is
held by many small owners, and game preservation is
not thought of. The numerous pieces of waste ground,
"to let on building lease," the excavated ground,
where rubbish can be thrown, the refuse and ash
heaps — these are the haunts of the London crow.
Suburban railway stations are often haunted by crows,
which perch on the telegraph wires close to the back
windows of the houses that abut upon the metals.
There they sit, grave and undisturbed by the noisy
engines which pass beneath them.

In the shrubberies around villa gardens, or in the
hedges of the small paddocks attached, thrushes and
other birds sometimes build their nests. The children
of the household watch the progress of the nest, and
note the appearance of the eggs with delight. Their
friends of larger growth visit the spot occasionally,
and orders are given that the birds shall be protected,
the gardeners become gamekeepers, and the lawn or
shrubbery is guarded like a preserve. Everything
goes well till the young birds are almost ready to quit
the nest, when one morning they are missing.

The theft is, perhaps, attributed to the boys of the
neighbourhood, but unjustly, unless plain traces of
entry are visible. It is either cats or crows. The
cats cannot be kept out, not even by a dog, for they
watch till his attention is otherwise engaged. Food
is not so much the object as the pleasure of destruction,
for cats will kill and yet not eat their victim. The
crow may not have been seen in the garden, and it
may be said that he could not have known of the nest

112 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

without looking round the place. But the crow is
a keen observer, and has not the least necessity to
search for the nest.

He merely keeps a watch on the motions of the old
birds of the place, and knows at once by their flight
being so continually directed to one spot that there
their treasure lies. He and his companion may come
very early in the morning — summer mornings are
bright as noonday long before the earliest gardener is
abroad — or they may come in the dusk of the
evening. Crows are not so particular in retiring
regularly to roost as the rook.

The furze and copse frequented by the pair which I
found attacking the missel-thrushes are situate at the
edge of extensive arable fields. In these, though not
overlooked by gamekeepers, there is a good deal of
game which is preserved by the tenants of the farms.
After the bitter winter and wet summer of 1879, there
was a complaint, too well founded, that the partridges
were diminished in numbers. But the crows were not.
There were as many of them as ever. When there
were many partridges the loss of a few eggs or chicks
was not so important. But when there are but few,
every egg or chick destroyed retards the re- stocking
of the fields.

The existence of so many crows all round London
is, in short, a constant check upon the game. The
belt of land immediately outside the houses, and lying
between them and the plantations which are preserved,
is the crow's reserve, where he hunts in security. He
is so safe that he has almost lost all dread of man,
and his motions can be observed without trouble.

THE CROWS. 113

The ash-heap at the corner of the furze, besides the
crows, became the resort of rats, whose holes were so
thick in the bank as to form quite a bury. After the
rats came the weasels.

When the rats were most numerous, before the
ash-heap was sifted, there was a weasel there nearly
every day, slipping in and out of their holes. In the
depth of the country an observer might walk some
considerable distance and wait about for hours without
seeing a weasel ; but here by the side of a busy
suburban road there were plenty. Professional rat-
catchers ferreted the bank once or twice, and filled
their iron cages. With these the dogs kept by dog-
fanciers in the adjacent suburb were practised in
destroying vermin at so much a rat. Though ferreted
and hunted down by the weasels the rats were not
rooted out, but remained till the ash-heap was sifted
and no fresh refuse deposited.

In one place among the gorse, the willows, birches,
and thorn bushes make a thick covert, which is
adjacent to several of the hidden pools previously
mentioned. Here a brook-sparrow or sedge-reedling
takes up his quarters in the spring, and chatters on,
day and night, through the summer. Visitors to the
opera and playgoers returning in the first hours of
the morning from Covent-garden or Drury-lane can
scarcely fail to hear him if they pause but one
moment to listen to the nightingale.

The latter sings in one bush and the sedge-reedling
in another close together. The moment the nightin-
gale ceases the sedge-reedling lifts his voice, which is
a very penetrating one, and in the silence of the night

114 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

may be heard some distance. This bird is credited
with imitating the notes of several others, and has
been called the English mocking-bird, but I strongly
doubt the imitation. Nor, indeed, could I ever trace
the supposed resemblance of its song to that of other
birds.

It is a song of a particularly monotonous character.
It is distinguishable immediately, and if the bird
happens to nest near a house, is often disliked on
account of the loud iteration. Perhaps those who first
gave it the name of the mocking-bird were not well
acquainted with the notes of the birds which they
fancied it to mock. To mistake it for the nightingale,
some of whose tones it is said to imitate, would be
like confounding the clash of cymbals with the soft
sound of a flute.

Linnets come to the furze, and occasionally magpies,
but these latter only in winter. Then, too, golden-
crested wrens may be seen searching in the furze
bushes, and creeping round and about the thorns and
brambles. There is a roadside pond close to the furze,
the delight of horses and cattle driven along the dusty
way in summer. Along the shelving sandy shore the
wagtails run, both the pied and the yellow, but few
birds come here to wash ; for that purpose they prefer
a running stream if it be accessible.

Upon the willow trees which border it, a reed
sparrow or blackheaded bunting may often be ob-
served. One bright March morning, as I came up the
road, just as the surface of the pond became visible it
presented a scene of dazzling beauty. At that distance
only the tops of the ripples were seen, reflecting the

THE GROWS. 115

light at a very low angle. The result was that the eye
saw nothing of the water or the wavelet, but caught
only the brilliant glow. Instead of a succession of
sparkles there seemed to be a golden liquid floating
on the surface as oil floats — a golden liquid two or
three inches thick, which flowed before the wind.

Besides this surface of molten gold there was a
sheen and flicker above it, as if a spray or vapour,
carried along, or the crests of the wavelets blown over,
was also of gold. But the metal conveys no idea of
the glowing, lustrous light which filled the hollow by
the dusty road. It was visible from one spot only, a
few steps altering the angle lessened the glory, and as
the pond itself came into view there was nothing but
a ripple on water somewhat thick with suspended sand.
Thus things change their appearance as they are
looked at in different ways.

A patch of water crowsfoot grows on the farthest
side of the pond, and in early summer sends up lovely
white flowers.

116 NATURE NEAE LONDON.

HEATHLANDS.

SANDOWN has become one of the most familiar places
near the metropolis, but the fir woods at the back
of it are perhaps scarcely known to exist by many
who visit the fashionable knoll. Though near at
hand, they are shut off by the village of Esher ; but
a mile or two westwards, down the Portsmouth
highway, there is a cartroad on the left hand which
enters at once into the woods.

The fine white sand of the soil is only covered by
a thin coating of earth formed from the falling leaves
and decayed branches, so thin that it may sometimes
be rubbed away by the foot or even the fingers.
Grass and moss grow sparingly in the track, but
wherever wheels or footsteps have passed at all
frequently the sand is exposed in white streaks under
the shadowy firs. In grass small objects often escape
observation, but on such a bare surface everything
becomes visible. Coming to one of these places on
a summer day, I saw a stream of insects crossing
and recrossing, from the fern upon one side to the
fern upon the other.

They were ants, but of a very much larger species
than the little red and black " emmets " which exist
in the meadows. These horse ants were not much

HE AT ELANDS. 117

less than half an inch in length, with a round spot
at each end like beads, or the black top of long pins.
The length of their legs enabled them to move much
quicker, and they raced to and fro over the path with
great rapidity. The space covered by the stream
was a foot or more broad, all of which was crowded
and darkened by them, and as there was no cessation
in the flow of this multitude, their numbers must
have been immense.

Standing a short way back, so as not to interfere
with their proceedings, I saw two of these insects
seize hold of a twig, one at each end. The twig,
which was dead and dry, and had dropped from a fir,
was not quite so long as a match, but rather thicker.
They lifted this stick with ease, and carried it along,
exactly as labourers carry a plank. A few short
blades of grass being in the way they ran up against
them, but stepped aside, and so got by. A cart
which had passed a long while since had forced down
the sand by the weight of its load, leaving a ridge
about three inches high, the side being perpendicular.

Till they came to this cliff the two ants moved
parallel, but here one of them went first, and climbed
up the bank with its end of the stick, after which the
second followed and brought up the other. An inch
or two further, on the level ground, the second ant
left hold and went away, and the first laboured on
with the twig and dragged it unaided across the rest
of the path. Though many other ants stayed and
looked at the twig a moment, none of them now
offered assistance, as if the chief obstacle had been
surmounted.

118 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

Several other ants passed, each carrying the slender
needles which fall from firs, and which seemed nothing
in their powerful grasp. These burdens of wood all
went in one direction, to the right of the path.

I took a step there, but stayed to watch two more
ants, who had got a long scarlet fly between them,
one holding it by the head and the other by the tail.
They were hurrying their prey over the dead leaves
and decayed sticks which strewed the ground, and
dragging it mercilessly through moss and grass. I
put the tip of my stick on the victim, but instead of
abandoning it they tugged and pulled desperately,
as if they would have torn it to pieces rather than
have yielded. So soon as I released it away they
went through the fragments of branches, rushing the
quicker for the delay.

A little further there was a spot where the ground
for a yard or two was covered with small dead brown
leaves, last year's, apparently of birch, for some young-
birch saplings grew close by. One of these leaves
suddenly rose up and began to move of itself, as
it seemed ; an ant had seized it, and holding it by
the edge travelled on, so that as the insect was partly
hidden under it, the leaf appeared to move alone,
now over sticks and now under them. It reminded
me of the sight which seemed so wonderful to the
early navigators when they came to a country where,
as they first thought, the leaves were alive and walked
about.

The ant with the leaf went towards a large heap
of rubbish under the sapling birches'. While watching
the innumerable multitude of these insects, whose

HEATIILANDS. 119

road here crossed these dead dry leaves, I became
conscious of a rustling sound, which at first I attri-
buted to the wind, but seeing that the fern was still
and that the green leaves of a Spanish chestnut
opposite did not move, I began to realize that this
creeping, rustling noise distinctly audible, was not
caused by any wind, but by the thousands upon
thousands of insects passing over the dead leaves and
among the grass. Stooping down to listen better,
there could be no doubt of it : it was the tramp of
this immense army.

The majority still moved in one direction, and
I found it led to the heap of rubbish over which they
swarmed. This heap was exactly what might have
been swept together by half a dozen men using long
gardeners' brooms, and industriously clearing the
ground under the firs of the fragments which had
fallen from them. It appeared to be entirely com-
posed of small twigs, fir-needles, dead leaves, and
similar things. The highest part rose about level
with my chest — say, between four and five feet — the
heap was irregularly circular, and not less than three
or four yards across, with sides gradually sloping.
In the midst stood the sapling birches, their stumps
buried in it, the rubbish having been piled up around
them.

This heap was, in fact, the enormous nest or hill
of a colony of horse ants. The whole of it had been
gathered together, leaf by leaf, and twig by twig,
just as I had seen the two insects carrying the little
stick, and the third the brown leaf above itself. It
really seemed some way round the outer circumference

120 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

of the nest, and while walking round it was necessary
to keep brushing off the ants which dropped on the
shoulder from the branches of the birches. For they
were everywhere ; every inch of ground, every bough
was covered with them. Even standing near it was
needful to kick the feet continually against the black
stump of a fir which had been felled to jar them off,
and this again brought still more, attracted by the
vibration of the ground.

The highest part of the mound was in the shape of
a dome, a dome whitened by layers of fir-needles,
which was apparently the most recent part and the
centre of this year's operations. The mass of the
heap, though closely compacted, was fibrous, and a
stick could be easily thrust into it, exposing the eggs.
No sooner was such an opening made, and the stick
withdrawn from the gap, than the ants swarmed into
it, falling headlong over upon each other, and filling
the bottom with their struggling bodies. Upon
leaving the spot, to follow the footpath, I stamped
my feet to shake down any stray insects, and then
took off my coat and gave it a thorough shaking.

Immense ant-hills are often depicted in the illus-
trations to tropical travels, but this great pile, which
certainly contained more than a cartload, was within a
few miles of Hyde Park-corner. From nests like this
large quantities of eggs are obtained for feeding the
partridges, hatched from the eggs collected by mowers
and purchased by keepers. Part of the nest being
laid bare with any tool, the eggs are hastily taken out
in masses and thrown into a sack. Some think that
ant's eggs, although so favourite a food, are not

HEATHLANDS. 121

always the most advantageous. Birds which have
been fed freely on these eggs become fastidious and
do not care for much else, so that if the supply fails
they fall off in condition. If there are sufficient eggs
to last the season then a few every day produce the
best effect; if not they had better not have a feast
followed by a fast.

The sense of having a roof overhead is felt in
walking through a forest of firs like this, because the
branches are all at the top of the trunks. The stems
rise to the same height, and then the dark foliage
spreading forms a roof. As they are not very near
together the eye can see some distance between them,
and as there is hardly any underwood or bushes —
nothing higher than the fern — there is a space open
and unfilled between the ground and the roof so far
above.

A vast hollow extends on every side, nor is it broken
by the flitting of birds or the rush of animals among
the fern. The sudden note of a wood-pigeon, hoarse
and deep, calling from a fir top, sounds still louder
and ruder in the spacious echoing vault beneath, so
loud as at first to resemble the baying of a hound.
The call ceases, and another of these watch-dogs of
the woods takes it up afar off.

There is an opening in the monotonous firs by
some rising ground, and the sunshine falls on young
Spanish chestnuts and underwood, through which is
a little used foot-path. If firs are planted in wilder-
nesses with the view of ultimately covering the barren
soil with fertile earth, formed by the decay of vege-
table matter, it is, perhaps, open to discussion as to

122 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

whether the best tree has been chosen. Under firs
the ground is generally dry, too dry for decay ; the
resinous emanations rather tend to preserve anything
that falls there.

No underwood or plants and little grass grows
under them; these, therefore, which make soil
quickest, are prevented from improving the earth.
The needles of firs lie for months without decay;
they are, too, very slender, and there are few
branches to fall. Beneath any other trees (such as
the edible chestnut and birch, which seem to grow-
here), there are the autumn leaves to decay, the twigs
and branches which fall off, while grasses and plants
flourish, and brambles and underwood grow freely.
The earth remains moist, and all these soon cause an
increase of the fertility ; so that, unless fir tree timber
is very valuable, and I never heard that it was, I
would rather plant a waste with any other tree or
brushwood, provided, of course, it would grow.

It is a pleasure to explore this little dell by the side
of the rising ground, creeping under green boughs
which brush the shoulders, after the empty space of
the firs. Within there is a pond, where lank horse-
tails grow thickly, rising from the water. Returning
to the rising ground I "pursue the path, still under the
shadow of the firs. There is no end to them — the
vast monotony has no visible limit. The brake fern
— it is early in July — has not yet reached its full
height, but what that will be is shown by these thick
stems which rise smooth and straight, fully three feet
to the first frond.

A woodpecker calls, and the gleam of his green and

HEATHLANDS. 123

gold is visible for a moment as he hastens away — the
first bird, except the wood-pigeons, seen for an hour,
yet there are miles of firs around. After a time the
ground rises again, the tall firs cease, but are suc-
ceeded by younger firs. These are more pleasant
because they do not exclude the sky. The sunshine
lights the path, and the summer blue extends above.
The fern, too, ceases, and the white sand is now
concealed by heath, with here and there a dash of
colour. Furze chats call, and flit to and fro; the
hum of bees is heard once more — there was not
one under the vacant shadow; and swallows pass
overhead.

At last emerging from the firs the open slope is
covered with heath only, but heath growing so
thickly that even the narrow footpaths are hidden
by the overhanging bushes of it. Some small bushes
of furze here and there are dead and dry, but every
prickly point appears perfect ; when struck with the
walking-stick the bush crumbles to pieces. Beneath
and amid the heath what seems a species of lichen
grows so profusely as to give a grey undertone. In
places it supplants the heath, the ground is concealed
by lichen only, which crunches under the foot like
hoar-frost. Each piece is branched not unlike a
stag's antlers; gather a handful and it crumbles to
pieces in the fingers, dry and brittle.

A quarry for sand has been dug down some eight
or ten feet, so that standing in it nothing else is
visible. This steep scarp shows the strata, yellow
sand streaked with thin brown layers ; at the top it is
fringed with heath in full flower, bunches of purple

124 NATURE NEAE LONDON.

bloom overhanging the edge, and behind this the
azure of the sky.

Here, where the ground slopes gradually, it is
entirely covered with the purple bells ; a sheen and
gleam of purple light plays upon it. A fragrance of
sweet honey floats up from the flowers where grey
hive-bees are busy. Ascending still higher and
crossing the summit, the ground almost suddenly
falls away in a steep descent, and the entire hill side,
seen at a glance, is covered with heath, and heath
alone. A bunch at the very edge offers a purple
cushion fit for a king; resting here a delicious
summer breeze, passing over miles and miles of fields
and woods yonder, comes straight from the distant
hills.

Along those hills the lines of darker green are
woods ; there are woods to the south, and west, and
east, heath around, and in the rear the gaze travels
over the tops of the endless firs. But southwards is
sweetest ; below, beyond the verge of the heath, the
corn begins, and waves in the wind. It is the breeze
that makes the summer day so lovely.

The eggs of the nighthawk are sometimes found at
this season near by. They are laid on the ground,
on the barest spots, where there is no herbage. At
dusk, the nighthawk wheels with a soft yet quick
flight over the ferns and about the trees. Along the
hedges bounding the heath butcher-birds watch for
their prey — sometimes on the furze, sometimes on a
branch of ash. Wood-sage grows plentifully 011 the
banks by the roads ; it is a plant somewhat resem-
bling a lowly nettle ; the leaves have a hop-like scent,

HEATHLANDS. 125

and so bitter and strong is the odour that immediately
after smelling them the mouth for a moment feels dry
with a sense of thirst.

The angle of a field by the woods on the eastern
side of the heath, the entire corner, is blue in July
with viper's bugloss. The stalks rise some two feet,
and are covered with minute brown dots; they are
rough, and the lower part prickly. Blue flowers in
pairs, with pink stamens and pink buds, bloom thickly
round the top, and, as each plant has several stalks,
it is very conspicuous where the grass is short.

There are hundreds of these flowers in this corner,
and along the edge of the wood ; a quarter of an acre
is blue with them. So indifferent are people to such
things that men working in the same field, and who
had pulled up the plant and described its root as like
that of a dock, did not know its name. Yet they
admired it. " It is an innocent-looking flower," they
said, that is, pleasant to look at.

By the roadside I thought I saw something red
under the long grass of the mound, and, parting the
blades, found half a dozen wild strawberries. They
were larger than usual, and just ripe. The wild
strawberry is a little more acid than the cultivated,
and has more flavour than would be supposed from
its small size.

Descending to the lower ground again, the brake
fills every space between the trees ; it is so thick and
tall that the cows which wander about, grazing at
their will, each wear a bell slung round the neck,
that their position may be discovered by sound.
Otherwise it would be difficult to find them in the fern

126 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

or among the firs. There are many swampy places
here, which should be avoided by those who dislike
snakes. The common harmless snakes are numerous
in this part, and they always keep near water. They
often glide into a mole's " angle," or hole, if found in
the open.

Adders are known to exist in the woods round
about, but are never, or very seldom, seen upon the
heath itself. In the woods of the neighbourhood they
are not uncommon, and are still sometimes killed for
the sake of the oil. The belief in the virtue of adder's
fat, or oil, is still firm ; among other uses it is con-
sidered the best thing for deafness, not, of course,
resulting from organic defect. For deafness, the oil
should be applied by pouring a small quantity into
the ear, exactly in the same manner as in the play
the poison is poured into the ear of the sleeping king.
Cures are declared to be effected by this oil at the
present day.

It is procured by skinning the adder, taking the fat,
and boiling it ; the result is a clear oil, which never
thickens in the coldest weather. One of these reptiles
on being killed and cut open was found to contain the
body of a full grown toad. The old belief that the
young of the viper enters its mouth for refuge still
lingers. The existence of adders in the woods here
seems so undoubted that strangers should be a little
careful if they leave the track. Viper's bugloss,
which grows so freely by the heath, was so called
because anciently it was thought to yield an antidote
to the adder's venom.

( 127 )

THE RIVER.

THERE is a slight but perceptible colour in the
atmosphere of summer. It is not visible close at
hand, nor always where the light falls strongest, and
if looked at too long it sometimes fades away. But
over gorse and heath, in the warm hollows of wheat-
fields, and round about the rising ground there is
something more than air alone. It is not mist, nor
the hazy vapour of autumn, nor the blue tints that
come over distant hills and woods.

As there is a bloom upon the peach and grape, so
this is the bloom of summer. The air is ripe and
rich, full of the emanations, the perfume, from corn
and flower and leafy tree. In strictness the term will
not, of course, be accurate, yet by what other word
can this appearance in the atmosphere be described
but as a bloom ? Upon a still and sunlit summer
afternoon it may be seen over the osier-covered islets
in the Thames immediately above Teddington Lock.

It hovers over the level cornfields that stretch
towards Eichmond, and along the ridge of the wooded
hills that bound them. The bank by the towing-path
is steep and shadowless, being bare of trees or hedge ;
but the grass is pleasant to rest on, and heat is
always more supportable near flowing water. In

128 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

places the friable earth has crumbled away, and there,
where the soil and the stones are exposed, the stone-
crop flourishes. A narrow footpath on the summit,
raised high above the water, skirts the corn, and is
overhung with grass heavily laden by its own seed.

Sometimes in early June the bright trifolium,
drooping with its weight of flower, brushes against the
passer-by — acre after acre of purple. Occasionally
the odour of beans in blossom floats out over the
river. Again, above the green wheat the larks rise,
singing as they soar ; or later on the butterflies
wander over the yellow ears. Or, as the law of
rotation "dictates, the barley whitens under the sun.
Still, whether in the dry day, or under the dewy
moonlight, the plain stretching from the water to the
hills is never without perfume, colour, or song.

There stood, one summer not long since, in the
corner of a barley field close to the Lock, within a
stone's throw, perfect shrubs of mallow, rising to the
shoulder, thick as a walking stick, and hung with
flower. Poppies filled every interstice between the
barley stalks, their scarlet petals turned back in very
languor of exuberant colour, as the awns, drooping
over, caressed them. Poppies, again, in the same
fields formed a scarlet ground from which the golden
wheat sprang up, and among it here and there, shone
the large blue rays of wild succory.

The paths across the corn having no hedges, the
wayfarer really walks among the wheat, and can
pluck with either hand. The ears rise above the
heads of children, who shout with joy as they rush
along as though to the arms of their mother.

THE RIVER. 129

Beneath the towing-path, at the roots of the willow
bushes, which the tow-ropes, so often drawn over
them, have kept low, the water-docks lift their thick
stems and giant leaves. Bunches of rough-leaved
cornfrey grow down to the water's edge — indeed, the
coarse stems sometimes bear signs of having been
partially under water when a freshet followed a storm.
The flowers are not so perfectly bell-shaped as those
of some plants, but are rather tubular. They appear
in April, though then green, and may be found all the
summer months. Where the comfrey grows thickly
the white bells give some colour to the green of the
bank, and would give more were they not so often
overshadowed by the leaves.

Water betony, or persicaria, lifts its pink spikes
everywhere, tiny florets close together round the stem
at the top ; the leaves are willow-shaped, and there is
scarcely a hollow or break in the bank where the
earth has fallen which is not clothed with them. A
mile or two up the river the tansy is plentiful, bearing
golden buttons, which, like every fragment of the
feathery foliage, if pressed in the fingers, impart to
them a peculiar scent. There, too, the yellow loose-
strife pushes up its tall slender stalks to the top of the
low willow bushes, that the bright yellow flowers may
emerge from the shadow.

The river itself, the broad stream, ample and full,
exhibits all its glory in this reach ; from One Tree to
the Lock it is nearly straight, and the river itself is
everything. Between wooded hills, or where divided
by numerous islets, or where trees and hedges enclose
the view, the stream is but part of the scene. Here

K

130 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

it is all. The long raised bank without a hedge or
fence, with the cornfields on its level, simply guides
the eye to the water. Those who are afloat upon
it insensibly yield to the influence of the open
expanse.

The boat whose varnished sides but now slipped so
gently that the cutwater did not even raise a wavelet,
and every black rivet head was visible as a line of
dots, begins to forge ahead. The oars are dipped
farther back, and as the blade feels the water holding
it in the hollow, the lissom wood bends to its work.
Before the cutwater a wave rises, and, repulsed,
rushes outwards. At each stroke, as the weight swings
towards the prow, there is just the least faint depres-
sion at its stem as the boat travels. Whirlpool after
whirlpool glides from the oars, revolving to the rear
with a threefold motion, round and round, backwards
and outwards. The crew impart their own life to
their boat; the animate and inanimate become as
one, the boat is no longer wooden but alive.

If there be a breeze a fleet of white sails comes
round the willow-hidden bend. But the Thames
yachtsmen have no slight difficulties to contend with.
The capricious wind is nowhere so thoroughly capri-
cious as on the upper river. Along one mile there
may be a spanking breeze, the very next is calm, or
with a fitful puff coming over a high hedge, which
flutters his pennant, but does not so much as shake
the sail. Even in the same mile the wind may take
the water on one side, and scarcely move a leaf on the
other. But the current is always there, and the
vessel is certain to drift.

THE RIVER. 131

When at last a good opportunity is obtained, just as
the boat heels over, and the rushing bubbles at the
prow resound, she must be put about, and the flap-
ping foresail almost brushes the osiers. If she does
not come round — if the movement has been put off a
moment too long — the keel grates, and she is aground
immediately. It is nothing but tacking, tacking,
tacking — a kind of stitching the stream.

Nor can one always choose the best day for the
purpose ; the exigencies of business, perhaps, will not
permit, and when free, the wind, which has been
scattering tiles and chimney-pots and snapping tele-
graph wires in the City all the week, drops on the
Saturday to nothing. He must possess invincible
patience, and at the same time be always ready to
advance his vessel even a foot, and his judgment must
never fail him at the critical time.

But the few brief hours when the circumstances
are favourable compensate for delays and monotonous
calms ; the vessel, built on well-judged lines, answers
her helm and responds to his will with instant
obedience, and that sense of command is perhaps the
great charm of sailing. There are others who find a
pleasure in the yacht. When at her moorings on a
sunny morning she is sometimes boarded by laughing
girls, who have put off from the lawn, and who
proceed in the most sailor-like fashion to overhaul the
rigging and see that everything is ship-shape. No
position shows off a well-poised figure to such advan-
tage as when, in a close-fitting costume, a lady's arms
are held high above her head to haul at a rope.

So the river life flows by; skiffs, and four oars,

132 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

canoes, solitary scullers in outriggers, once now and
then a swift eight, launches, a bargee in a tublike
dingy standing up and pushing his sculls instead of
pulling ; gentlemen, with their shoulders in a halter,
hauling like horses and towing fair freights against
the current ; and punts poled across to shady nooks.
The splashing of oars, the staccato sound as a blade
feathered too low meets the wavelets, merry voices
sometimes a song, and always a low undertone, which,
as the wind accelerates it, rises to a roar. It is the
last leap of the river to the sea ; the last weir to
whose piles the tide rises. On the bank of the weir
where the tide must moisten their roots grow dense
masses of willowherb, almost as high as the shoulder,
with trumpet-shaped pink flowers.

Let us go back again to the bank by the cornfields,
with the glorious open stretch of stream. In the
evening, the rosy or golden hues of the sunset will be
reflected on the surface from the clouds; then the
bats wheel to and fro, and once now and then a night-
hawk will throw himself through the air with un-
certain flight, his motions scarcely to be followed, as
darkness falls. Am I mistaken, or are kingfishers
less numerous than they were only a few seasons
since? Then I saw them, now I do not. Long
continued and severe frosts are very fatal to these
birds ; they die on the perch.

And may I say a word for the Thames otter ? The
list of really wild animals now existing in the home
counties is so very, very short, that the extermination
of one of them seems a serious loss. Every effort is
made to exterminate the otter. No sooner does one

THE. RIVER. 133

venture down the river than traps, gins, nets, dogs,
prongs, brickbats, every species of missile, all the
artillery of vulgar destruction, are brought against its
devoted head. Unless my memory serves me wrong,
one of these creatures caught in a trap not long since
was hammered to death with a shovel or a pitchfork.

Now the river fox is, we know, extremely destructive
to fish, but what are a basketful of " bait " compared
to one otter? The latter will certainly never be
numerous, for the moment they become so, otter-
hounds would be employed, and then we should see
some sport. Londoners, I think, scarcely recognize
the fact that the otter is one of the last links between
the wild past of ancient England and the present days
of high civilization.

The beaver is gone, but the otter remains, and
comes so near the mighty City as just the other side
of the well-known Lock, the portal through which a
thousand boats at holiday time convey men and
women to breathe pure air. The porpoise, and
even the seal it is said, ventures to Westminster
sometimes ; the otter to Kingston. Thus, the sea
sends its denizens past the vast multitude that surges
over the City bridges, and the last link with the olden
time, the otter, still endeavours to live near.

Perhaps the river is sweetest to look on in spring
time or early summer. Seen from a distance the
water seems at first sight, when the broad stream
fills the vision as a whole, to flow with smooth, even
current between meadow and corn field. But, coming
to the brink, that silvery surface now appears exqui-
sitely chased with ever- changing lines. The light airs,

134 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

wandering to and fro where high banks exclude the
direct influence of the breeze, flutter the ripples hither
and thither, so that, instead of rolling upon one lee
shore, they meet and expend their little force upon
each other. A continuous rising and falling, without
a line of direction, thus breaks up the light, not with
sparkle or glitter, but with endless silvery facets.

There is no pattern. The apparently intertangled
tracing on a work of art presently resolves itself into
a design, which once seen is always the same. These
wavelets form no design ; watch the sheeny maze as
long as one will, the eye cannot get at the clue, and
so unwind the pattern.

Each seems for a second exactly like its fellow, but
varies while you say " These two are the same," and
the white reflected light upon the wide stream is
now strongest here, and instantly afterwards flickers
yonder.

Where a gap in the willows admits a current of air
a ripple starts to rush straight across, but is met by
another returning, which has been repulsed from the
bluff bow of a moored boat, and the two cross and run
through each other. As the level of the stream now
slightly rises and again falls, the jagged top of a large
stone by the shore alternately appears above, or is
covered by the surface. The water as it retires leaves
for a moment a hollow in itself by the stone, and then
swings back to fill the vacuum.

Long roots of willows and projecting branches cast
their shadow upon the shallow sandy bottom ; the
shadow of a branch can be traced slanting downwards
with the shelve of the sand till lost in the deeper water.

THE RIVER. 135

Are those little circlets of light enclosing a round
umbra or slightly darker spot, that move along the
bottom as the bubbles drift above on the surface
shadows or reflections ?

In still, dark places of the stream, where there seems
no current, a dust gathers on the water, falling from
the trees, or borne thither by the wind and dropping
where its impulse ceases. Shadows of branches lie
here upon the surface itself, received by the greenish
water dust. Eound the curve on the concave and lee
side of the river, where the wind drives the wavelets
direct upon the strand, there are little beaches formed
by the undermining and fall of the bank.

The tiny surge rolls up the incline; each wave
differing in the height to which it reaches, and none
of them alike, washing with it minute fragments of
stone and gravel, mere specks which vibrate to and
fro with the ripple and even drift with the current.
Will these fragments, after a process of trituration,
ultimately become sand ? A groove runs athwart the
bottom, left recently by the keel of a skiff, recently
only, for in a few hours these specks of gravel, sand,
and particles that sweep along the bottom, fill up such
depressions. The motion of these atoms is not con-
tinuous, but intermittent; now they rise and are
carried a few inches and there sink, in a minute or
two to rise again and proceed.

Looking to windward there is a dark tint upon the
water ; but down the stream, turning the other way,
intensely brilliant points of light appear and disap-
pear. Behind a boat rowed against the current two
widening lines of wavelets, in the shape of an elongated

136 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

V, stretch apart and glitter, and every dip of the oars
and the slippery oar blades themselves, as they rise
out of the water, reflect the sunshine. The boat
appears but to touch the surface, instead of sinking
into it, for the water is transparent, and the eye can
see underneath the keel.

Here, by some decaying piles, a deep eddy whirls
slowly round and round ; they stand apart from the
shore, for the eddy has cleared away the earth around
them. Now, walking behind the waves that roll away
from you, dark shadowy spots fluctuate to and fro in
the trough of the water. Before a glance can define
its shape the shadow elongates itself from a spot to an
oval, the oval melts into another oval, and reappears
afar off. When, too, in flood time, the hurrying
current seems to respond more sensitively to the shape
of the shallows and the banks beneath, there boils up
from below a ceaseless succession of irregular circles
as if the water there expanded from a centre, marking
the verge of its outflow with bubbles and raised lines
upon the surface.

By the side float tiny whirlpools, some rotating this
way and some that, sucking down and boring tubes
into the stream. Longer lines wander past, and as
they go, curve round, till when about to make a spiral
they lengthen out and drift, and thus, perpetually
coiling and uncoiling, glide with the current. They
somewhat resemble the conventional curved strokes
which, upon an Assyrian bas-relief, indicate water.

Under the spring sunshine, the idle stream flows
easily onward, yet every part of the apparently even
surface varies; and so, too, in a larger way, the

THE EIVER. 137

aspects of the succeeding reaches change. Upon
one broad bend the tints are green, for the river
moves softly in a hollow, with its back as it were, to
the wind.

The green lawn sloping to the shore, and the dark
cedar's storeys of flattened foliage, tier above tier ;
the green osiers of two eyots ; the light-leaved aspen ;
the tall elms, fresh and green ; and the green haw-
thorn bushes give their colour to the water, smooth
as if polished, in which they are reflected. A white
swan floats in the still narrow channel between the
eyots, and there is a punt painted green moored in
a little inlet by the lawn, and scarce visible under
drooping boughs. Eoofs of red tile and dormer
windows rise behind the trees, the dull yellow of the
walls is almost hidden, and deep shadows lurk about
the shore.

Opposite, across the stream, a wide green sward
stretches beside the towing path, lit up with sunshine
which touches the dandelions till they glow in the
grass. From time to time a nightingale sings in a
hawthorn unregarded, and in the elms of the park
hard by a crowd of jackdaws chatter. But a little
way round a curve the whole stream opens to the
sunlight and becomes blue, reflecting the sky. Again,
sweeping round another curvo with bounteous flow,
the current meets the wind direct, a cloud comes up,
the breeze freshens, and the watery green waves are
tipped with foam.

Eolling upon the strand, they leave a line like a
tide marked by twigs and fragments of dead wood,
leaves, and the hop-like flowers of Chichester elms

138 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

which have been floated up and left. Over the stormy
waters a band of brown bank-martins wheel hastily
to and fro, and from the osiers the loud chirp of the
sedge-reedling rises above the buffet of the wind
against the ear, and the splashing of the waves.

Once more a change, where the stream darts along
swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still
streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach,
and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching
old barges which have been hauled up on the bank.
A skiff partly drawn upon the beach rocks as the
current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish
of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the
wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting for hire
by the bridge ; the waterman cleaning them with a
parti-coloured mop spies me eyeing his vessels, and
before I know exactly what is going on, and whether
I have yet made up my mind, the sculls are ready,
the cushions in ; I take my seat, and am shoved
gently forth upon the stream.

After I have gone under the arch, and am clear
of all obstructions, I lay the sculls aside, and reclining
let the boat drift past a ballast punt moored over the
shallowest place, and with a rising load of gravel.
One man holds the pole steadying the scoop, while
his mate turns a windlass the chain from which drags
it along the bottom filling the bag with pebbles, and
finally hauls it to the surface, when the contents are
shot out in the punt.

It is a floating box rather than a boat, square at
each end, and built for capacity instead of progress.
There are others moored in various places, and all

THE RIVER. 139

hard at work. The men in this one, scarcely glancing
at my idle skiff, go steadily on, dropping the scoop,
steadying .the pole, turning the crank, and emptying
the pebbles with a rattle.

Where do these pebbles come from ? Like the
stream itself there seems a continual supply; if a
bank be scooped away and punted to the shore
presently another bank forms. If a hollow be
deepened, by and by it fills up ; if a channel be
opened, after a while it shallows again. The stony
current flows along below, as the liquid current above.
Yet in so many centuries the strand has not been
cleared of its gravel, nor has it all been washed out
from the banks.

The skiff drifts again, at first slowly, till the current
takes hold of it and bears it onward. Soon it is
evident that a barge -port is near — a haven where
barges discharge their cargoes. A by-way leads
down to the river where boats are lying for hire — a
dozen narrow punts, waiting at this anchorage till
groundbait be lawful. The ends of varnished skiffs,
high and dry, are visible in a shed carefully covered
with canvass ; while sheaves of oars and sculls lean
against the wooden wall.

Through the open doors of another shed there may
be had a glimpse of shavings and tools, and slight
battens crossing the workshop in apparent confusion,
forming a curious framework. These are the boat-
builder's struts and stays, and contrivances to keep
the boat in rigid position, that her lines may be true
and delicate, strake upon strake of dull red mahogany
rising from the beechen keel, for the craftsman

140 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

strings his boat almost as a violinist strings his
violin, with the greatest care and heed, and with a
right adjustment of curve and due proportion. There
is not much clinking, or sawing, or thumping ; little
noise, but much skill.

Gradually the scene opens. Far down a white
bridge spans the river ; on the shore red-tiled and
gabled houses crowd to the very edge ; and behind
them a church tower stands out clear against the
sky. There are barges everywhere. By the towing-
path colliers are waiting to be drawn up stream, black
as their freight, by the horses that are nibbling the
hawthorn hedge ; while by the wharf, labourers are
wheeling barrows over bending planks from the
barges to the carts upon the shore. A tug comes
under the bridge, panting, every puff re-echoed from
the arches, dragging by sheer force deeply laden flats
behind it. The water in front of their bluff bows
rises in a wave nearly to the deck, and then swoops
in a sweeping curve to the rear.

The current by the port runs back on the wharf
side towards its source, and the foam drifts up the
river instead of down. Green flags on a sandbank
far out in the stream, their roots covered and their
bent tips only visible, now swing with the water and
now heel over with the breeze. The Edwin and
Angelina lies at anchor, waiting to be warped into
her berth, her sails furled, her green painted water
barrel lashed by the stern, her tiller idle after the
long and toilsome voyage from Eochester.

For there are perils of the deep even to those who
only go down to it in barges. Barge as she is, she is

THE RIVER. 141

not without a certain beauty, and a certain interest,
inseparable from all that has received the buffet of the
salt water, and over which the salt spray has flown.
Barge too, as she is, she bears her part in the
commerce of the world. The very architecture on
the shore is old fashioned where these bluff bowed
vessels come, narrow streets and over-hanging houses,
boat anchors in the windows, sails and tarry ropes ;
and is there not a Kow Barge Inn somewhere ?

"Hoy, ahoy!"

The sudden shout startles me, and, glancing round,
I find an empty black barge, high out of the water,
floating helplessly down upon me with the stream.
Noiselessly the great hulk had drifted upon me ; as
it came the light glinted on the wavelets before the
bow, quick points of brilliant light. But two strokes
with the sculls carried me out of the way.

142 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

NUTTY AUTUMN.

THERE is some honeysuckle still flowering at the tops
of the hedges, where in the morning gossamer lies
like a dewy net. The gossamer is a sign both of
approaching autumn and, exactly at the opposite
season of the year, of approaching spring. It
stretches from pole to pole, and bough to bough, in
the copses in February, as the lark sings. It covers
the furze, and lies along the hedge-tops in September,
as the lark, after a short or partial silence, occasion-
ally sings again.

But the honeysuckle does not flower so finely as
the first time ; there is more red (the unopened petal)
than white, and beneath, lower down the stalk, are
the red berries, the fruit of the former bloom. Yellow
weed, or ragwort, covers some fields almost as thickly
as buttercups in summer, but it lacks the rich colour
of the buttercup. Some knotty knapweeds stay in
out-of-the-way places, where the scythe has not
been ; some bunches of mayweed, too, are visible in
the corners of the stubble.

Silverweed lays its golden flower — like a buttercup
without a stalk — level on the ground; it has no
protection, and any passing foot may press it into the
dust. A few white or pink flowers appear on the

NUTTY AUTUMN. 143

brambles, and in waste places a little St. John's
wort remains open, but the seed vessels are for the
most part forming. St. John's wort is the flower
of the harvest ; the yellow petals appear as the wheat
ripens, and there are some to be found till the sheaves
are carted. Once now and then a blue and slender
bell-flower is lighted on; in Sussex the larger varieties
bloom till much later.

By still ponds, to which the moorhens have now
returned, tall spikes of purple loosestrife rise in
bunches. In the furze there is still much yellow,
and wherever heath grows it spreads in shimmering
gleams of purple between the birches ; for these three,
furze, heath, and birch, are usually together. The
fields, therefore, are not yet flowerless, nor yet with-
out colour here and there, and the leaves, which stay
on the trees till late in the autumn, are more interest-
ing now than they have been since they lost their first
fresh green.

Oak, elm, beech, and birch, all have yellow spots,
while retaining their groundwork of green. Oaks are
often much browner, but the moisture in the atmo-
sphere keeps the sap in the leaves. Even the birches
are only tinted in a few places, the elms very little,
and the beeches not much more : so it would seem
that their hues will not be gone altogether till
November. Frosts have not yet bronzed the dogwood
in the hedges, and the hazel leaves are fairly firm.
The hazel generally drops its leaves at a touch about
this time, and while you are nutting, if you shake
.a bough, they come down all around.

The rushes are but faintly yellow, and the slender

144 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

tips still point upwards. Dull purple burrs cover the
burdock; the broad limes are withering, but the
leaves are thick, and the teazles are still flowering.
Looking upwards, the trees are tinted; lower, the
hedges are not without colour, and the field itself
is speckledj with blue and yellow. The stubble is
almost hidden in many fields by the growth of weeds
brought up by the rain ; still the tops appear above
and do not allow it to be green. The stubble has
a colour — white if barley, yellow if wheat or oats.
The meads are as verdant, even more so, than in the
spring, because of the rain, and the brooks crowded
with green flags.

Haws are very plentiful this year (1881), and excep-
tionally large, many fully double the size commonly
seen. So heavily are the branches laden with bunches
of the red fruit that they droop as apple trees do with
a more edible burden. Though so big, and to all
appearance tempting to birds, none have yet been
eaten; and, indeed, haws seem to be resorted to
only as a change, unless severe weather compels.

Just as we vary our diet, so birds eat haws, and
not many of them till driven by frost and snow. If
any stay on till the early months of next year, wood-
pigeons and missel-thrushes will then eat them ; but
at this season they are untouched. Blackbirds will
peck open the hips directly the frost comes ; the hips
go long before the haws. There was a large crop
of mountain-ash berries, every one of which has been
taken by blackbirds and thrushes, which are almost
as fond of them as of garden fruit.

Blackberries are thick, too—it is a berry year— and

NUTTY AUTUMN. 145

up in the horse-chestnut the prickly-coated nuts hang
up in bunches, as many as eight on a stalk. Acorns
are large, but not so singularly numerous as the
( berries, nor are hazel-nuts. This provision of hedge-
fruit no more indicates a severe winter than a damaged
wheat harvest indicates a mild one.

There is something wrong with elm trees. In the
early part of this summer, not long after the leaves
were fairly out upon them, here and there a branch
appeared as if it had been touched with red-hot iron
and burnt up, all the leaves withered and browned
on the boughs. First one tree was thus affected,
then another, then a third, till, looking round the
fields, it seemed as if every fourth or fifth tree had
thus been burnt.

It began with the leaves losing colour, much as
they do in autumn, on the particular bough; gradually
they faded, and finally became brown and of course
dead. As they did not appear to shrivel up, it looked
as if the grub or insect, or whatever did the mischief,
had attacked, not the leaves, but the bough itself.
Upon mentioning this I found that it had been
noticed in elm avenues and groups a hundred miles
distant, so that it is not a local circumstance.

As far as yet appears, the elms do not seem mate-
rially injured, the damage being outwardly confined to
the bough attacked. These brown spots looked very
remarkable just after the trees had become green.
They were quite distinct from the damage caused by
the snow of October, 1880. The boughs broken by the
snow had leaves upon them which at once turned
brown, and in the case of the oak were visible, the

L

146 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

following spring as brown spots among the green.
These snapped boughs never bore leaf again. It was
the young fresh green leaves of the elms, those that
appeared in the spring of 1881, that withered as if
scorched. The boughs upon which they grew had
not been injured ; they were small boughs at the
outside of the tree. I hear that this scorching up of
elm leaves has been noticed in other districts for
several seasons.

The dewdrops of the morning, preserved by the
mist, which the sun does not disperse for some hours,
linger on late in shaded corners, as under trees, on
drooping blades of grass, and on the petals of flowers.
Wild bees and wasps may often be noticed on these
blades of grass that are still wet, as if they could
suck some sustenance from the dew. Wasps fight
hard for their existence as the nights grow cold.
Desperate and ravenous, they will eat anything, but
perish by hundreds as the warmth declines.

Dragon-flies of the larger size are now very busy
rushing to and fro on their double wings ; those who
go blackberrying or nutting cannot fail to see them.
Only a very few days since — it does not seem a week
— there was a chiffchaff calling in a copse as merrily
as in the spring. This little bird is the first, or very
nearly the first, to come in the spring, and one of
the last to go as autumn approaches. It is curious
that, though singled out as a first sign of spring, the
chiffchaff has never entered into the home life of
the people like the robin, the swallow, or even the
sparrow.

There is nothing about it in the nursery rhymes

NUTTY AUTUMN. 147

or stories, no one goes out to listen to it, children are
not taught to recognize it, and grown-up persons
are often quite unaware of it. I never once heard
a countryman, a labourer, a farmer, or any one who
was always out of doors, so much as allude to it.
They never noticed it, so much is every one the pro-
duct of habit.

The first swallow they looked for, and never missed ;
but they neither heard nor saw the chiffchaff. To
those who make any study at all of birds it is, of
course, perfectly familiar ; but to the bulk of people
it is unknown. Yet it is one of the commonest of
migratory birds, and sings in every copse and hedge-
row, using loud, unmistakable notes. At last, in
the middle of September, the chiffchaff, too, is silent.
The swallow remains ; but for the rest, the birds
have flocked together, finches, starlings, sparrows,
and gone forth into the midst of the stubble far from
the place where their nests were built, and where they
sang, and chirped, and whistled so long.

The swallows, too, are not without thought of going.
They may be seen twenty in a row, one above the
other, or on the slanting ropes or guys which hold up
the masts of the rickcloths over the still unfinished
<jornricks. They gather in rows on the ridges of the
tiles, and wisely take counsel of each other. Books
are up at the acorns ; they take them from the bough,
while the pheasants come underneath and pick up
those that have fallen.

The partridge coveys are more numerous and larger
than they have been for several seasons, and though
shooting has now been practised for more than a fort-

148 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

night, as many as twelve and seventeen are still to be
counted together. They have more cover than usual
at this season, not only because the harvest is still
about, but because where cut the stubble is so full of
weeds that when crouching they are hidden. In some
fields the weeds are so thick that even a pheasant
can hide.

South of London the harvest commenced in the
last week of July. The stubble that was first cut
still remains unploughed ; it is difficult to find a fresh
furrow, and I have only once or twice heard the quick
strong puffing of the steam-plough. While the wheat
was in shock it was a sight to see the wood-pigeons
at it. Flocks of hundreds came perching on the
sheaves, and visiting the same field day after day.
The sparrows have never had such a feast of grain
as this year. Whole corners of wheat fields — they
work more at corners — were cleared out as clean by
them as if the wheat had been threshed as it stood.

The sunshine of the autumn afternoons is faintly
tawny, and the long grass by the wayside takes from
it a tawny undertone. Some other colour than the
green of each separate blade, if gathered, lies among
the bunches, a little, perhaps like the hue of the
narrow pointed leaves of the reeds. It is caught only
for a moment, and looked at steadily it goes. Among
the grass, the hawkweeds, one or two dandelions, and
a stray buttercup, all yellow, favour the illusion. By
the bushes there is a double row of pale buff bryony
leaves ; these, too, help to increase the sense of a
secondary colour.

The atmosphere holds the beams, and abstracts

NUTTY AUTUMN. U9

from them their white brilliance. They come slower
with a drowsy light, which casts a less defined shadow
of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in
the oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn
affect the rays, and retouch them with their own hue.
An immaterial mist across the fields looks like a cloud
of light hovering on the stubble : the light itself made
visible.

The tawniness is indistinct, it haunts the sunshine,
and is not to be fixed, any more than you can say
where it begins and ends in the complexion of a
Immette. Almost too large foi their cups, the acorns
have a shade of the same hue now before they become
brown. As it withers, the many-pointed leaf of the
white bryony and the bine as it shrivels, in like
manner, do their part. The white thistle-down, which
stays on the bursting thistles because there is no
wind to waft it away, reflects it ; the white is pushed
aside by the colour that the stained sunbeams bring.

Pale yellow thatch on the wheat ricks becomes
a deeper yellow ; broad roofs of old red tiles smoulder
under it. What can you call it but tawniness ? — the
earth sunburnt once more at harvest time. Sunburnt
and brown — for it deepens into brown. Brown
partridges, and pheasants, at a distance brown, their
long necks stretched in front and long tails behind
gleaming in the stubble. Brown thrushes just ventur-
ing to sing again. Brown clover hay ricks; the
bloom on the third crop yonder, which was recently
a bright colour, is fast turning brown, too.

Here and there a thin layer of brown leaves rustles
under foot. The scaling bark on the lower part of

150 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the tree trunks is brown. Dry dock stems, fallen
branches, the very shadows, are not black, but brown.
With red hips and haws, red bryony and woodbine
berries, these together cause the sense rather than
the actual existence of a tawny tint. It is pleasant ;
but sunset comes so soon, and then after the trees are
in shadow beneath, the yellow spots at the tops of
the elms still receive the light from the west a few
moments longer.

There is something nutty in the short autumn day
• — shorter than its duration as measured by hours, for
the enjoyable day is between the clearing of the mist
and the darkening of the shadows. The nuts are
ripe, and with them is associated wine and fruit.
They are hard but tasteful ; if you eat one you want
ten, and after ten twenty. In the wine there is a
glow, a spot like tawny sunlight ; it falls on your
hand as you lift the glass.

They are never really nuts unless you gather them
yourself. Put down the gun a minute or two, and
pull the boughs this way. One or two may drop of
themselves as the branch is shaken, one among the
brambles, another outwards into the stubble. The
leaves rustle against hat and shoulders; a thistle is
crushed under foot, and the down at last released.
Bines of bryony hold the ankles, and hazel boughs are
stiff and not ready to bend to the will. This large
brown nut must be cracked at once ; the film slips off
the kernel, which is white underneath. It is sweet.

The tinted sunshine comes through between the tall
hazel rods ; there is a grasshopper calling in the sward
on the other side of the mound. The bird's nest in

NUTTY AUTUMN. 151

the thorn-bush looks as perfect as if just made, instead
of having been left long long since — the young birds
have flocked into the stubbles. On the briar which
holds the jacket the canker rose, which was green in
summer, is now rosy. No such nuts as those captured
with cunning search from the bough in the tinted
sunlight and under the changing leaf.

The autumn itself is nutty, brown, hard, frosty, and
sweet. Nuts are hard, frosts are hard ; but the one
is sweet, and the other braces the strong. Exercise
often wearies in the spring, and in the summer heats
is scarcely to be faced ; but in autumn, to those who
are well, every step is bracing and hardens the frame,
as the sap is hardening in the trees.

152 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

ROUND A LONDON COPSE.

IN October a party of wood-pigeons took up their
residence in the little copse which has been previously
mentioned. It stands in the angle formed by two
suburban roads, and the trees in it overshadow some
villa gardens. This copse has always been a favourite
with birds, and it is not uncommon to see a pheasant
about it, sometimes within gun-shot of the gardens,
while the call of the partridges in the evening may
now and then be heard from the windows. But
though frequently visited by wood-pigeons, they did
not seem to make any stay till now when this party
arrived.

There were eight of them. During the day they
made excursions into the stubble fields, and in the
evening returned to roost. They remained through
the winter, which will be remembered as the most
severe for many years. Even in the sharpest frost,
if the sun shone out, they called to each other now
and then. On the first day of the year their hollow
cooing came from the copse at midday.

During the deep snow which blocked the roads and
covered the fields almost a foot deep, they were silent,
but were constantly observed flying to and fro.

ROUND A LONDON COPSE. 153

Immediately it became milder they recommenced to
coo, so that at intervals the note of the wood-pigeon
was heard in the adjacent house from October, all
through the winter, till the nesting time in May.
Sometimes towards sunset in the early spring they all
perched together before finally retiring on the bare,
slender tips of the tall birch trees, exposed and clearly
visible against the sky.

Six once alighted in a row on a long birch branch,
bending it down with their weight like a heavy load of
fruit. The stormy sunset flamed up, tinting the fields
with momentary red, and their hollow voices sounded
among the trees. By May they had paired off, and
each couple had a part of the copse to themselves.
Instead of avoiding the house, they seemed, on the
contrary, to come much nearer, and two or three
couples built close to the garden.

Just there, the wood being bare of undergrowth,
there was nothing to obstruct the sight but some few
dead hanging branches, and the pigeons or ringdoves
could be seen continually flying up and down from
the ground to their nests. They were so near that
the darker marking at the end of the tail, as it was
spread open to assist the upward flight to the branch,
was visible. Outside the garden gate, and not more
than twenty yards distant, there stood three young
spruce firs, at the edge of the copse, but without the
boundary. To the largest of these one of the pigeons
came now and then ; he was half inclined to choose it
for his nest.

The noise of their wings as they rose and threshed
their strong feathers together over the tops of the trees

154 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

was often heard, and while in the garden one might
be watched approaching from a distance, swift as the
wind, then suddenly half-closing his wings and
shooting forwards, he alighted among the boughs.
Their coo is not in any sense tuneful ; yet it has a
pleasant association ; for the ringdove is pre-eminently
the bird of the woods and forests, and rightly named
the wood-pigeon. Yet though so associated with the
deepest and most lonely woods, here they were close
to the house and garden, constantly heard, and almost
always visible ; and London, too, so near. They
seemed almost as familiar as the sparrows and
starlings.

These pigeons were new inhabitants ; but turtle-
doves had built in the copse since I knew it. They
were late coming the last spring I watched them ; but,
when they did, chose a spot much nearer the house
than usual. The turtle-dove has a way of gurgling the
soft vowels " oo " in the throat. Swallows do not
make a summer, but when the turtle-dove coos summer
is certainly come. One afternoon one of the pair flew
up into a hornbeam which stood beside the garden not
twenty yards at farthest. At first he sat upright on
the branch watching me below, then turned and flut-
tered down to the nest beneath.

While this nesting was going on I could hear five
different birds at once either in the garden or from
any of the windows. The doves cooed, and every now
and then their gentle tones were overpowered by the
loud call of the wood-pigeons. A cuckoo called from
the top of the tallest birch, and a nightingale and a
brook-sparrow (or sedge-reedling) were audible together

BOUND A LONDON COPSE. 155

in the common on the opposite side of the road. It
is remarkable that one season there seems more of
one kind of bird than the next. The year alluded to,
for instance, in this copse was the wood-pigeons' year.
But one season previously the copse seemed to belong
to the missel-thrushes.

Early in the March mornings I used to wake as the
workmen's trains went rumbling by to the great City,
to see on the ceiling by the window a streak of sun-
light, tinted orange by the vapour through which the
level beams had passed. Something in the sense of
morning lifts the heart up to the sun. The light, the
air, the waving branches speak ; the earth and life
seem boundless at that moment. In this it is the
same on the verge of the artificial City as when the
rays come streaming through the pure atmosphere of
the Downs. While thus thinking, suddenly there
rang out three clear, trumpet-like notes from a tree at
the edge of the copse by the garden. A softer song
followed, and then again the same three notes, whose
wild sweetness echoed through the wood.

The voice of the missel-thrush sounded not only
close at hand and in the room, but repeated itself as
it floated away, as the bugle-call does. He is the
trumpeter of spring : Lord of March, his proud call
challenges the woods ; there are none who can answer-
Listen for the missel-thrush : when he sings the snow
may fall, the rain drift, but not for long ; the violets
are near at hand. The nest was in a birch visible
from the garden, and that season seemed to be the
missel-thrush's. Another year the cuckoos had
possession.

156 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

There is a detached ash tree in the field by the
•copse; it stands apart, and about sixty or seventy
yards from the garden. A cuckoo came to this ash
every morning, and called there for an hour at a time,
his notes echoing along the building, one following
ihe other as wavelets roll on the summer sands.
After awhile two more used to appear, and then there
was a chase round the copse, up to the tallest birch,
and out to the ash tree again. This went on day
after day, and was repeated every evening. Flying
from the ash to the copse and returning, the birds
were constantly in sight ; they sometimes passed
•over the house, and the call became so familiar that
it was not regarded any more than the chirp of a
sparrow. Till the very last the cuckoos remained
there, and never ceased to be heard till they left to
cross the seas.

That was the cuckoos' season; next spring they
returned again, but much later than usual, and did
riot call so much, nor were they seen so often while
they were there. One was calling in the copse on the
evening of the 6th of May as late as half-past eight,
while the moon was shining. But they were not so
prominent ; and as for the missel-thrushes, I did not
hear them at all in the copse. It was the wood-
pigeons' year. Thus the birds come in succession
and reign by turns.

Even the starlings vary, regular as they are by
habit. This season (1881) none have whistled on
the house-top. In previous years they have always
come, and only the preceding spring a pair filled the
gutter with the materials of their nest. Long after

ROUND A LONDON COPSE. 157

they had finished a storm descended, and the rain,
thus dammed up and unable to escape, flooded the
corner. It cost half a sovereign to repair the damage,
but it did not matter ; the starlings had been happy.
It has been a disappointment this year not to listen
to their eager whistling and the flutter of their wings
as they vibrate them rapidly while hovering a moment
before entering their cavern. A pair of house-martins,
too, built under the eaves close to the starling's
nest, and they also disappointed me by not return-
ing this season, though the nest was not touched.
Some fate, I fear, overtook both starlings and house -
martins.

Another time it was the season of the lapwings.
Towards the end of November (1881), there appeared
a large flock of peewits, or green plovers, which flock
passed most of the day in a broad, level ploughed
field of great extent. At this time I estimated their
number as about four hundred; far exceeding any
flock I had previously seen in the neighbourhood.
Fresh parties joined the main body continually, until
by December there could not have been less than a
thousand. Still more and more arrived, and by the
first of January (1882) even this number was doubled,
and there were certainly fully two thousand there.
It is the habit of green plovers to all move at once,
to rise from the ground simultaneously, to turn in
the air, or to descend — and all so regular that their
very wings seem to flap together. The effect of
such a vast body of white-breasted birds uprising
as one from the dark ploughed earth was very re-
markable.

158 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

When they passed overhead the air sang like the
midsummer hum with the shrill noise of beating
wings. When they wheeled a light shot down re-
flected from their white breasts, so that people in-
voluntarily looked up to see what it could be. The
sun shone on them, so that at a distance the flock
resembled a cloud brilliantly illuminated. In an
instant they turned and the cloud was darkened.
Such a great flock had not been seen in that district
in the memory of man.

There did not seem any reason for their congre-
gating in this manner, unless it was the mildness of
the winter, but winters had been mild before without
such a display. The birds as a mass rarely left this
one particular field — they voyaged round in the air
and settled again in the same place. Some few used
to spend hours with the sheep in a meadow, remain-
ing there till dusk, till the mist hid them, and their
cry sounded afar in the gloom. They stayed all
through the winter, breaking up as the spring ap-
proached. By March the great flock had dispersed.

The winter was very mild. There were buttercups,
avens, and white nettles in flower on December 31st.
On January 7th, there were briar buds opening into
young leaf ; on the 9th a dandelion in flower, and an
arum up. A grey veronica was trying to open flower
on the llth, and hawthorn buds were so far open that
the green was visible on the 16th. On February 14th
•a yellow-hammer sang, and brambles had put forth
green buds. Two wasps went by in the sunshine.
'The 14th is Old Candlemas, supposed to rule the
weather for some time after. Old Candlemas was

MOUND A LONDON COPSE. ,159

very fine and sunny till night, when a little rain fell.
The summer that followed was cold and ungenial,
with easterly winds, though fortunately it brightened
up somewhat for the harvest. A chaffinch sang on the
20th of February : all these are very early dates.

One morning while I was watching these plovers,
a man with a gun got over a gate into the road.
Another followed, apparently without a weapon, but
as the first proceeded to take his gun to pieces, and
put the barrel in one pocket at the back of his coat,
and the stock in a second, it is possible that there was
another gun concealed. The coolness with which the
fellow did this on the highway was astounding, but
his impudence was surpassed by his stupidity, for at
the very moment he hid the gun there was a rabbit
out feeding within easy range, which neither of these
men observed.

The boughs of a Scotch fir nearly reached to one
window. If I recollect rightly, the snow was on the
ground in the early part of the year, when a golden-
crested wren came to it. He visited it two or three
times a week for some time; his golden crest dis-
tinctly seen among the dark green needles of the fir.

There are squirrels in the copse, and now and then
one comes within sight. In the summer there was
one in the boughs of an oak close to the garden.
Once, and once only, a pair of them ventured into
the garden itself, deftly passing along the wooden
palings and exploring a guelder rose-bush. The
pheasants which roost in the copse wander to it from
distant preserves. One morning in spring, before the
corn was up, there was one in a field by the copse

160 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

calmly walking along the ridge of a furrow so near
that the ring round his neck was visible from the
road.

In the early part of last autumn, while the acorns
were dropping from the oaks and the berries ripe, I
twice disturbed a pheasant from the garden of a villa
not far distant. There were some oaks hard by, and
from under these the bird had wandered into the
quiet sequestered garden. The oak in the copse on
which the squirrel was last seen is peculiar for
bearing oak-apples earlier than any other of the
neighbourhood, and there are often half a dozen of
them on the twigs on the trunk before there is one
anywhere else. The famous snowstorm of October,
1880, snapped off the leader or top of this oak.

Jays often come, magpies more rarely, to the copse ;
as for the lesser birds they all visit it. In the horn-
beams at the verge blackcaps sing in spring a sweet
and cultured song, which does not last many seconds.
They visit a thick bunch of ivy in the garden. By
these hornbeam trees a streamlet flows out of the
copse, crossed at the hedge by a pole, to prevent
cattle straying in. The pole is a robin's perch. He
is always there, or near ; he was there all through
the terrible winter, all the summer, and he is there
now.

There are a few inches, a narrow strip of sand,
beside the streamlet under this pole. Whenever a
wagtail dares to come to this sand the robin im-
mediately appears and drives him away. He will
bear no intrusion. A pair of butcher-birds built very
near this spot one spring, but afterwards appeared to

SOUND A LONDON COPSE. 161

remove to a place where there is more furze, but
beside the same hedge. The determination and fierce
resolution of the shrike, or butcher-bird, despite his
small size, is most marked. One day a shrike darted
down from a hedge just before me, not a yard in front,
and dashed a dandelion to the ground.

His claws clasped the stalk, and the flower was
crushed in a moment ; he came with such force as to
partly lose his balance. His prey was probably a
humble-bee which had settled on the dandelion. The
shrike's head resembles that of the eagle in miniature.
From his favourite branch he surveys the grass, and
in an instant pounces on his victim.

There is a quiet lane leading out of one of the roads
which have been mentioned down into a wooded
hollow, where there are two ponds, one on each side
of the lane. Standing here one morning in the ear]y
summer, suddenly a kingfisher came shooting straight
towards me, and swerving a little passed within three
yards ; his blue wings, his ruddy front, the white
streak beside his neck, and long bill were visible for
a moment ; then he was away, straight over the
meadows, till he cleared a distant hedge and dis-
appeared. He was probably on his way to visit
his nest, for though living by the streams king-
fishers often have their nest a considerable way from
water.

Two years had gone by since I saw one here before,
perched then on the trunk of a willow which overhangs
one of the ponds. After that came the severe winters,
and it seemed as if the kingfishers were killed off, for
they are often destroyed by frost, so that the bird

M

162 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

came unexpectedly from the shadow of the trees,
across the lane, and out into the sunshine over the
field. It was a great pleasure to see a kingfisher
again.

This hollow is the very place of singing birds in
June. Up in the oaks blackbirds whistle — you do
not often see them, for they seek the leafy top branches,
but once now and then while fluttering across to
another perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human,
like some one playing the flute ; an uncertain player
now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful melody and
then losing it again. He does not know what quiver
or what turn his note will take before it ends ; the
note leads him and completes itself. His music
strives to express his keen appreciation of the love-
liness of the days, the golden glory of the meadow,
the light, and the luxurious shadows.

Such thoughts can only be expressed in fragments,
like a sculptor's chips thrown off as the inspiration
seizes him, not mechanically sawn to a set line. Now
and again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time,
the large white daisy stars, the grass with yellow-
dusted tips, the air which comes so softly unperceived
by any precedent rustle of the hedge. He feels the
beauty of the time, and he must say it. His notes
-come like wild flowers not sown in order. There is
not an oak here in June without a blackbird.

Thrushes sing louder here than anywhere else ;
they really seem to sing louder, and they are all
around. Thrushes appear to vary their notes with
the period of the year, singing louder in the summer,
and in the mild days of October when the leaves lie

ROUND A LONDON COPSE. 163

brown and buff on the sward tinder their perch more
plaintively and delicately. Warblers and willow- wrens
sing in the hollow in June, all out of sight among the
trees — they are easily hidden by a leaf.

At that time the ivy leaves which flourish up to the
very tops of the oaks are so smooth with enamelled
surface, that high up, as the wind moves them, they
reflect the sunlight and scintillate. Greenfinches in
the elms never cease love-making ; and love-making
needs much soft talking. A nightingale in a bush
sings so loud the hawthorn seems too small for the
vigour of the song. He will let you stand at the very
verge of the bough; but it is too near, his voice is
sweeter across the field.

There are still, in October, a few red apples on the
boughs of the trees in a little orchard beside the same
road. It is a natural orchard — left to itself — therefore
there is always something to see in it. The palings
by the road are falling, and are held up chiefly by the
brambles about them and the ivy that has climbed up.
Trees stand on the right and trees on the left ; there
is a tall spruce fir at the back.

The apple trees are not set in straight lines : they
were at first, but some have died away and left an
irregularity ; the trees lean this way and that, and they
iire scarred and marked as it were with lichen and
moss. It is the home of birds. A blackbird had its
nest this spring in the bushes on the left side, a
nightingale another in the bushes on the right, and
there the nightingale sang under the shadow of a
hornbeam for hours every morning while " City "
men were hurrying past to their train.

164 NATURE NEAE LONDON.

The sharp relentless shrike that used to live by the
copse moved up here, and from that very hornbeam
perpetually darted across the road upon insects in
the fern and furze opposite. He never entered the
orchard; it is often noticed that birds (and beasts
of prey) do not touch creatures that build near their
own nests. Several thrushes reside in the orchard ;
swallows frequently twittered from the tops of the
apple-trees. As the grass is so safe from intrusion
one of the earliest buttercups flowers here. Bennets
— the flower of the grass — come up ; the first bennet
is to green things what the first swallow is to the
breathing creatures of summer.

On a bare bough, but lately scourged by the east
wind, the apple bloom appears, set about with the
green of the hedges and the dark spruce behind.
White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in their
stately way, lighting the path which is strewn with
the green moss -like flowers fallen from the oaks.
There is an early bush of May. When the young
apples take form and shape the grass is so high even
the buttercups are overtopped by it. Along the edge
of the roadside footpath, where the dandelions,,
plantains, and grasses are thick with seed, the green-
finches come down and feed.

Now the apples are red that are left, and they hang
on boughs from which the leaves are blown by every
gust. But it does not matter when you pass, summer
or autumn, this little orchard has always something
to offer. It is not neglected — it is true attention to
leave it to itself.

Left to itself, so that the grass reaches its fullest

BOUND A LONDON COPSE. 16o

height; so that bryony vines trail over the bushes
and stay till the berries fall of their own ripeness ; so
that the brown leaves lie and are not swept away
unless the wind chooses ; so that all things follow
their own course and bent. The hedge opposite in
autumn, when reapers are busy with the sheaves, is
white with the large trumpet flowers of the great wild
convolvulus (or bindweed). The hedge there seems
made of convolvulus then ; nothing but convolvulus
and nowhere else does the flower flourish so strongly ;
the bines remain till the following spring.

Without a path through it, without a border or
parterre, unvisited, and left alone, the orchard has
acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness, such as
grows up in woods and far-away lonely places. It is
so commonplace and unpretentious that passers-by do
not notice it ; it is merely a corner of meadow dotted
with apple trees — a place that needs frequent glances
and a dreamy mood to understand it as the birds
understand it. They are always there. In spring,
thrushes move along rustling the fallen leaves as they
search among the arum sheaths unrolling beside the
sheltering palings. There are nooks and corners
whence shy creatures can steal out from the shadow
and be happy. There is a loving streak of sunshine
somewhere among the tree trunks.

Though the copse is so much frequented the migrant
birds (which have now for the most part gone) next
spring will not be seen nor heard there first. With
one exception, it is not the first place to find them.
The cuckoos which come to the copss do not call till
some time after others have been heard in the neigh-

166 NATUEE NEAR LONDON.

bourliood. There is another favourite copse a mile
distant, and the cuckoo can be heard near it quite a
week earlier. This last spring there were two days*
difference — a marked interval.

The nightingale that sings in the bushes on the
common immediately opposite the copse is late in
the same manner. There is a mound about half a
mile farther, where a nightingale always sings first,
before all the others of the district. The one on the
common began to sing last spring a full week later.
On the contrary, the sedge-reedling, which chatters
side by side with the nightingale, is the first of all his
kind to return to the neighbourhood. The same
thing happens season after season, so that when once
you know these places you can always hear the birds
several days before other people.

With flowers it is the same ; the lesser celandine,
the marsh marigold, the silvery cardamine, appear
first in one particular spot, and may be gathered
there before a petal has opened elsewhere. The first
swallow in this district generally appears round about
a pond near some farm buildings. Birds care nothing
for appropriate surroundings. Hearing a titlark sing-
ing his loudest, I found him perched on the rim of a
tub placed for horses to drink from.

This very pond by which the first swallow appears
is muddy enough, and surrounded with poached mud,
for a herd of cattle drink from and stand in it. An
elm overhangs it, and on the lower branches, which
are dead, the swallows perch and sing just over the
muddy water. A sow lies in the mire. But the

ROUND A LONDON COPSE. 167

sweet swallows sing on softly; they do not see
the wallowing animal, the mud, the brown water ;
they see only the sunshine, the golden buttercups,
and the blue sky of summer. This is the true way to
look at this beautiful earth.

103 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

MAGPIE FIELDS.

THERE were ten magpies together on the 9th of
September, 1881, in a field of clover beside a road but
twelve miles from Charing Cross. Ten magpies would
be a large number to see at once anywhere in the
south, and not a little remarkable so near town. The
magpies were doubtless young birds which had packed,
and were bred in the nests in the numerous elms of
the hedgerows about there. At one time they were
scattered over the field, their white and black colours
dotted everywhere, so that they seemed to hold entire
possession of it.

Then a knot of them gathered together, more came
up, and there they were all ten fluttering and rest-
lessly moving. After a while they passed on into the
next field, which was stubble, and, collected in a
bunch, were even more conspicuous there, as the
stubble did not conceal them so much as the clover.
That was on the 9th of September ; by the end
of the month weeds had grown so high that the
stubble itself in that field had disappeared, and from
a distance it looked like pasture. In the stubble
the magpies remained till I could watch them no
longer.

MAGPIE FIELDS. 169

A short time afterwards, on the 17th of September,
looking over the gateway of an adjacent field which
had been wheat, then only recently carried, a pheasant
suddenly appeared rising up out of the stubble ; and
then a second, and a third and fourth. So tall were
the weeds that, in a crouching posture, at the first
glance they were not visible ; then as they fed,
stretching their necks out, only the top of their backs
€ould be seen. Presently some more raised their
heads in another part of the field, then two more on
the left side, and one under an oak by the hedge, till
seventeen were counted.

These seventeen pheasants were evidently all young
birds, which had wandered from covers, some distance,
too, for there is no preserve within a mile at least.
Seven or eight came near each other, forming a flock,
but just out of gunshot from the road. They were all
extremely busy feeding in the stubble. Next day
half a dozen or so still remained, but the rest had
scattered ; some had gone across to an acre of barley
yet standing in a corner ; some had followed the
dropping acorns along the hedge into another piece of
stubble ; others went into a breadth of turnips.

Day by day their numbers diminished as they parted,
till only three or four could be seen. Such a sortie
from cover is the standing risk of the game -pre server.
Towards the end of September, on passing a barley-
field, still partly uncut, and with some spread, there
was a loud, confused, murmuring sound up in the
trees, like that caused by the immense flocks of star-
lings which collect in winter. The sound, however,
did not seem quite the same, and upon investigation it

170 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

turned out to be an incredible number of sparrows,
whose voices were audible across the field.

They presently flew out from the hedge, and
alighted on one of the rows of cut barley, making it
suddenly brown from one end to the other. There
must have been thousands ; they continually flew up,
swept round with a whirring of wings, and settled,
again darkening the spot they chose. Now, as the
sparrow eats from morning to night without ceasing,
say for about twelve hours, and picks up a grain of
corn in the twinkling of an eye, it would be a moderate
calculation to allow this vast flock two sacks a week.
Among them there was one white sparrow — his white
wings showed distinctly among the brown flock. In
the most remote country I never observed so great a
number of these birds at once ; the loss to the farmers
must be considerable.

There were a few fine days at the end of the month.
One afternoon there rose up a flock of rooks out of a
large oak tree standing separate in the midst of an
arable field which was then at last being ploughed.
This oak is a favourite with the rooks of the neighbour-
hood, and they have been noticed to visit it more
frequently than others. Up they went, perhaps a
hundred of them, rooks and jackdaws together cawing
and soaring round and round till they reached a great
height. At that level, as if they had attained their
ball-room, they swept round and round on out-
stretched wings, describing circles and ovals in the
air. Caw-caw; jack-juck-juck ! Thus dancing in
slow measure, they enjoyed the sunshine, full from
their feast of acorns.

MAGPIE FIELDS. 171

Often as one was sailing on another approached and
interfered with his course when they wheeled about
each other. Soon one dived. Holding his wings at
full stretch and rigid, he dived headlong rotating as
he fell till his beak appeared as if it would be driven
into the ground by the violence of the descent. But
within twenty feet of the earth he recovered himself
and rose again. Most of these dives, for they all
seemed to dive in turn, were made over the favourite
oak, and they did not rise till they had gone down to
its branches. Many appeared about to throw them-
selves against the boughs.

Whether they wheeled round in circles, or whether
they dived, or simply sailed onward in the air, they
did it in pairs. As one was sweeping round another
came to him. As one sailed straight on a second
closely followed. After one had dived the other soon
followed, or waited till he had come up and rejoined
him. They danced and played in couples as if they
were paired already. Some left the main body and
steered right away from their friends, but turned and
came back, and in about half an hour they all de-
scended and settled in the oak from which they had
risen. A loud cawing and jack-juck-jucking accom-
panied this sally.

The same day it could be noticed how the shadows
of the elms cast by the bright sunshine on the grass,
which is singularly fresh and green this autumn, had
a velvety appearance. The dark shadow on the fresh
green looked soft as velvet. The waters of the brook
had become darker now; they flowed smooth, and
at the brink reflected a yellow spray of horse-chest-

172 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

nut. The sunshine made the greenfinches call, the
chaffinches utter their notes, and a few thrushes sing ;
but the latter were soon silenced by frosts in the early
morning, which turned the fern to so deep a reddish
brown as to approach copper.

At the beginning of October a herd of cows and a
small flock of sheep were turned into the clover field
to eat off the last crop, the preceding crops having
been mown. There were two or more magpies among
the sheep every day ; magpies, starlings, rooks, crows,
and wagtails follow sheep about. The clover this
year seems to have been the best crop, though in the
district alluded to it has not been without an enemy.
Early in July, after the first crop had been mown a
short time, there came up a few dull yellowish looking
stalks among it. These increased so much that one
field became yellowish all over, the stalks overtopped
the clover, and overcame its green.

It was the lesser broom rape, and hardly a clover
plant escaped this parasitic growth. By carefully
removing the earth with a pocket-knife the two could
be dug up together. From the roots of the clover a
slender filament passes underground to the somewhat
bulbous root of the broom rape, so that although they
stand apart and appear separate plants, they are
connected under the surface. The stalk of the broom
rape is clammy to touch, and is an unwholesome
greenish yellow, a dull undecided colour ; if cut, it is
nearly the same texture throughout. There are,
numerous dull purplish flowers at the top, but it has
no leaves. It is not a pleasant looking plant — a
strange and unusual growth.

MAGPIE FIELDS. 173

One particular field was completely covered with it
and scarcely a clover field in the neighbourhood was
perfectly free. But though drawing the sap from the
clover plants the latter grew so vigorously that little
damage was apparent. After a while the broom rape
disappeared, but the clover shot up and afforded good
forage. So late as the beginning of October a few
poppies flowered in it, their bright scarlet contrasting
vividly with the green around, and the foliage above
fast turning brown.

The flight of the jay much resembles that of the
magpie, the same jaunty, uncertain style, so that at
a distance from the flight alone it would be difficult to
distinguish them, though in fact the magpie's longer
tail and white and black colours always mark him.
One morning in July, standing for a moment in the
shade beside a birch copse which borders the same
road, a jay flew up into the tree immediately overhead,
so near that the peculiar shape of the head and bill
and all the plumage was visible. He looked down
twice, and then flew. Another morning there was a
jay on the ground, searching about, not five yards
from the road, nor twenty from a row of houses. It
was at the corner of a copse which adjoins them.
If not so constantly shot at the jay would be anything
but wild.

Notwithstanding all these magpies and jays, the
partridges are numerous this year in the fields border-
ing the highway, and which are not watched by keepers.
Thinking of the partridges makes me notice the ant-
hills. There were comparatively few this season,
but on the 4th of August, which was a sunny day, I

174 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

saw the inhabitants of a hill beside the road bringing
out the eggs into the sunshine. They could not do it
fast enough; some ran out with eggs, and placed
them on the top of the little mound, and others seized
eggs that had been exposed sufficiently and hurried
with them into the interior.

Woody nightshade grows in quantities along this
road, and, apparently, all about the outskirts of the
town. There is not a hedge without it, and it creeps
over the mounds of earth at the sides of the highways.
Some fumitory appeared this summer in a field of
barley; till then I had not observed any for some
time in that district. This plant, once so common,
but now nearly eradicated by culture, has a soft
pleasant green. A cornflower, too, flowered in another
field, quite a treasure to find where these beautiful
blue flowers are so scarce. The last day of August
there was a fierce combat on the footpath between a
wasp and a brown moth. They rolled over and
struggled, now one, now the other uppermost, and
the wasp appeared to sting the moth repeatedly.
The moth, however, got away.

There are so many jackdaws about the suburbs
that, when a flock of rooks passes over, the caw-
cawing is quite equalled by the jack-jucking. The
daws are easily known by their lesser size and by
their flight, for they use their wings three times to
the rook's once. Numbers of daws build in the knot-
holes and hollows of the horse-chestnut trees in Bushey
Park, and in the elms of the grounds of Hampton
Court.

To the left of the Diana Fountain there are a

MAGPIE FIELDS. 175

number of hawthorn trees, which stand apart, and
are aged like those often found on village greens and
commons. Upon some of these hawthorns mistletoe
grows, not in such quantities as on the apples in
Gloucester and Hereford, but in small pieces.

As late in the spring as May-day I have seen some
berries, then very large, on the mistletoe here. ' Earlier
in the year, when the adjoining fountain was frozen
and crowded with skaters, there were a number of
missel-thrushes in these hawthorns, but they appeared
to be eating the haws. At all events, they left some
of the mistletoe berries, which were on the plant
months later.

Just above Molesey Lock, in the meadows beside
the towing-path, the blue meadow geranium, or
crane's-bill, flowers in large bunches in the summer.
It is one of the most beautiful flowers of the field,
and after having lost sight of it for some time, to see
it again seemed to bring the old familiar far-away
fields close to London. Between Hampton Court
and Kingston the towing-path of the Thames is
bordered by a broad green sward, sufficiently wide
to be worth mowing. One July I found a man at
work here in advance of the mowers, pulling up yarrow
plants with might and main.

The herb grew in such quantities that it was
necessary to remove it first, or the hay would be too
coarse. On conversing with him, he said that a
person came sometimes and took away a trap load
of yarrow; the flowers were to be boiled and mixed
with cayenne pepper, as a remedy for cold in the
chest. In spring the dandelions here are pulled in

176 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

sackfulls, to be eaten as salad. These things have
fallen so much into disuse in the country that country
people are surprised to find the herbalists flourishing
round the great city of progress.

The continued dry weather in the early summer of
the present year, which was so favourable to partridges
and game, was equally favourable to the increase of
several other kinds of birds, and among these the
jays. Their screeching is often heard in this district,
quite as often as it is in country woodlands. One
day in the spring I saw six all screeching and yelling
together up and down a hedge near the road. Now
in October they are plentiful. One flew across over-
head with an acorn in its beak, and perched in an
elm beside the highway. He pecked at the acorn
on the bough, then glanced down, saw me, and fled,
dropping the acorn, which fell tap -tap from branch
to branch till it reached the mound.

Another jay actually flew up into a fir in the
green, or lawn, before a farm-house window, crossing
the road to do so. Four together were screeching
in an elm close to the road, and since then I have
seen others with acorns, while walking there. Indeed,
this autumn it is not possible to go far without
hearing their discordant and unmistakable cry.
They were never scarce here, but are unusually
numerous this season, and in the scattered trees of
hedgerows their ways can be better observed than
in the close covert of copses and plantations, where
you hear them, but cannot see for the thick fir
boughs.

It is curious to note the number of creatures to

MAGPIE FIELDS. Ill

whom the oak furnishes food. The jays, for instance,
are now visiting them for acorns ; in the summer they
fluttered round the then green branches for the
chafers, and in the evenings the fern owls or goat-
suckers wheeled about the verge for these and for
moths. Eooks come to the oaks in crowds for the
acorns; wood-pigeons are even more fond of them,
and from their crops quite a handful may sometimes
be taken when shot in the trees.

They will carry off at once as many acorns as old-
fashioned economical farmers used to walk about
with in their pockets, "chucking" them one, two, or
three at a time to the pigs in the stye as a bonne
louche and an encouragement to fatten well. Never
was there such a bird to eat as the wood-pigeon.
Pheasants roam out from the preserves after the same
fruit, and no arts can retain them at acorn time.
Swine are let run out about the hedgerows to help
themselves. Mice pick up the acorns that fall, and
hide them for winter use, and squirrels select the
best.

If there is a decaying bough, or, more particularly,
one that has been sawn off, it slowly decays into
a hollow, and will remain in that state for years, the
resort of endless woodlice, snapped up by insect-eating
birds. Down from the branches in spring there
descend long, slender threads, like gossamer, with
a caterpillar at the end of each — the insect-eating
birds decimate these. So that in various ways the
oaks give more food to the birds than any other tree.
Where there are oaks there are sure to be plenty of
birds. Beeches come next. Is it possible that the

178 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

severe frosts we sometimes have split oak trees?
Some may be found split up the trunk, and yet not
apparently otherwise injured, as they probably would
be if it had been done by lightning. Trees are said
to burst in America under frost, so that it is not
impossible in this country.

There is a young oak beside the highway which
in autumn was wreathed as artistically as could have
been done by hand. A black bryony plant grew up
round it, rising in a spiral. The heart-shaped leaves
have dropped from the bine, leaving thick bunches of
red and green berries clustering about the greyish
stem of the oak.

Every one must have noticed that some trees have
a much finer autumn tint than others. This, it will
often be found, is an annual occurrence, and the same
elm, or- beech, or oak that has delighted the eye with
its hues this autumn, will do the same next year, and
excel its neighbours in colour. Oaks and beeches,
perhaps, are the best examples of this, as they are
also the trees that present the most beautiful appear-
ance in autumn.

There are oaks on villa lawns near London whose
glory of russet foliage in October or November is not
to be surpassed in the parks of the country. There
are two or three such oaks in Long Ditton. All oaks
do not become russet, or buff ; some never take those
tints. An oak, for instance, not far from those just
mentioned never quite loses its green; it cannot be
said, indeed, to remain green, but there is a trace of
it somewhere ; the leaves must, I suppose, be partly
buff and partly green ; and the mixture of these

MAGPIE FIELDS. 179

colours in bright sunshine produces a tint for which
I know no accurate term.

In the tops of the poplars, where most exposed, the
leaves stay till the last, those growing on the trunk
below disappearing long before those on the spire,
which bends to every blast. The keys of the horn-
beam come twirling down: the hornbeam and the
birch are characteristic trees of the London landscape
—the latter reaches a great height and never loses
its beauty, for when devoid of leaves the feathery
spray-like branches only come into view the more.

The abundant bird life is again demonstrated as
the evening approaches. Along the hedgerows, at
the corners of the copses, wherever there is the
least cover, so soon as the sun sinks the black-
birds announce their presence by their calls. Their
" ching, chinging," sounds everywhere ; they come
out on the projecting branches and cry, then fly fifty
yards further down the hedge, and cry again. During
the day they may not have been noticed, scattered as
they were under the bushes, but the dusky shadows
darkening the fields send them to roost, and before
finally retiring they " ching-ching " to each other.

Then, almost immediately after the sun has gone
•down, looking to the south-west the sky seen above
the trees (which hide the yellow sunset) becomes a
delicate violet. Soon a speck of light gleams faintly
through it — the merest speck. The first appearance
of a star is very beautiful; the actual moment of
first contact as it were of the ray with the eye is
always a surprise, however often you may have
enjoyed it, and notwithstanding that you are aware it

180 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

-will happen. Where there was only the indefinite
violet before, the most intense gaze into which could
discover nothing, suddenly, as if at that moment
"born, the point of light arrives.

So glorious is the night that not all London, with
its glare and smoke, can smother the sky; in the
midst of the gas, and the roar and the driving crowd,
look up from the pavement, and there, straight above,
are the calm stars. I never forget them, not even in
the restless Strand ; they face one coming down the
hill of the Haymarket ; in Trafalgar Square, looking
towards the high dark structure of the House at
Westminster, the clear bright steel silver of the planet
Jupiter shines unwearied, without sparkle or flicker.

Apart from the grand atmospheric changes caused
by a storm wave from the Atlantic, or an anti-cyclone,
London produces its own sky. Put a shepherd on St.
Paul's, allow him three months to get accustomed
to the local appearances and the deceptive smoke
clouds, and he would then tell what the weather of
the day was going to be far more efficiently than the
very best instrument ever yet invented. He would
not always be right ; but he would predict the local
London weather with far more accuracy than any one
reading the returns from the barometers at Valentia,
Stornaway, Brest, or Christiansand.

The reason is this — the barometer foretells the cloud
in the sky, but cannot tell where it will burst. The
practised eye can judge with very considerable
accuracy where the discharge will take place. Some
idea of what the local weather of London will be
for the next few hours may often be obtained by

MAGPIE FIELDS. 181

observation on either of the bridges — Westminster,
Waterloo, or London Bridge : there is on the bridges
something like a horizon, the best to be got in the
City itself, and the changes announce themselves
very clearly there. The difference in the definition
is really wonderful.

From Waterloo Bridge the golden cross on St.
Paul's and the dome at one time stand out as if
engraved upon the sky, clear and with a white aspect.
At the same time, the brick of the old buildings at
the back of the Strand is red and bright. The
structures of the bridges appear light, and do not
press upon their arches. The yellow straw stacked
on the barges is bright, the copper-tinted sails bright,
the white wall of the Embankment clear, and the
lions* heads distinct. Every trace of colour, in short,
is visible.

At another time the dome is murky, the cross
tarnished, the outline dim, the red brick dull, the
whiteness gone. In summer there is occasionally a
bluish haze about the distant buildings. These are
the same changes presented by the Downs in the
country, and betoken the state of the atmosphere as
clearly. The London atmosphere is, I should fancy,
quite as well adapted to the artist's uses as the
changeless glare of the Continent. The smoke itself
is not without its interest.

Sometimes upon Westminster Bridge at night the
scene is very striking. Vast rugged columns of vapour
rise up behind and over the towers of the House,
hanging with threatening aspect; westward the sky
is nearly clear, with some relic of the sunset glow :

182 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the river itself, black or illuminated with the electric
light, imparting a silvery blue tint, crossed again
with the red lamps of the steamers. The aurora of
dark vapour, streamers extending from the thicker
masses, slowly moves and yet does not go away ; it
is just such a sky as a painter might give to some
tremendous historical event, a sky big with presage,
gloom, tragedy. How bright and clear, again, are
the mornings in summer ! I once watched the sun
rise on London Bridge, and never forgot it.

In frosty weather, again, when the houses take
hard, stern tints, when the sky is clear over great
part of its extent, but with heavy thunderous looking
clouds in places — clouds full of snow — the sun becomes
of a red or orange hue, and reminds one of the lines
of Longfellow when Othere reached the North Cape —

" Bound in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, oh King !
"With red and lurid light."

The redness of the winter sun in London is, indeed,,
characteristic.

A sunset in winter or early spring floods the streets^
with fiery glow. It comes, for instance, down Piccadilly ;
it is reflected from the smooth varnished roofs of the
endless carriages that roll to and fro like the flicker
of a mighty fire ; it streaks the side of the street with
rosiness. The faces of those who are passing are lit
up by it, all'unconscious as they are. The sky above
London, indeed, is as full of interest as above the
hills. Lunar rainbows occasionally occur ; two to my
knowledge were seen in the direction and apparently
over the metropolis recently.

MAGPIE FIELDS. 183

When a few minutes on the rail has carried you
outside the hub as it were of London, among the quiet
tree-skirted villas, the night reigns as completely as in
the solitudes of the country. Perhaps even more so,
for the solitude is somehow more apparent. The last
theatre-goer has disappeared inside his hall door, the
last dull roll of the brougham, with its happy laughing
load, has died away — there is not so much as a single
footfall. The cropped holly hedges, the leafless
birches, the limes and acacias are still and distinct in
the moonlight. A few steps further out on the high-
way the copse or plantation sleeps in utter silence.

But the tall elms are the most striking ; the length
of the branches and their height above brings them
across the light, so that they stand out even more
shapely than when in leaf. The blue sky (not, of
course, the blue . of day), the white moonlight, the
bright stars — larger at midnight and brilliant, in
despite of the moon, which cannot overpower them in
winter as she does in summer evenings — all are as
beautiful as on the distant hills of old. By night, at
least, even here, in the still silence, Heaven has her
own way.

When the oak leaves first begin to turn buff, and
the first acorns drop, the redwings arrive, and their
" kuk-kuk " sounds in the hedges and^the shrubberies
in the gardens of suburban villas. They seem to
come very early to the neighbourhood of London, and
before the time of their appearance in other districts.
The note is heard before they are seen ; the foliage of
the shrubberies, still thick, though changing colour,
concealing them. Presently, when the trees are bare,

184: NATURE NEAR LONDON.

with the exception of a few oaks, they have dis-
appeared, passing on towards the west. The fieldfares,
too, as I have previously observed, do not stay. But
missel-thrushes seem more numerous near town than
in the country.

Every mild day in November the thrushes sing;
there are meadows where one may be certain to hear
the song thrush. In the dip or valley at Long Ditton
there are several meadows well timbered with elm,
which are the favourite resorts of thrushes, and their
song may be heard just there in the depth of winter,
when it would be possible to go a long distance on the
higher ground without hearing one. If you hear the
note of the song thrush during frost it is sure to rain
within a few hours ; it is the first sign of the weather
breaking up.

Another autumn sign is the packing (in a sense) of
the moorhens. During the summer the numerous
brooks and ponds about town are apparently partially
deserted by these birds ; at least they are not to be
seen by casual wayfarers. But directly the winter gets
colder they gather together in the old familiar places,
and five or six, or even more, come out at once to
feed in the meadows or on the lawns by the water.

Green plovers, or peewits, come in small flocks to
the fields recently ploughed ; sometimes scarcely a
gunshot from the walls of the villas. The tiny golden-
crested wrens are comparatively numerous near town
— the heaths with their bramble thickets doubtless suit
them ; so soon as the leaves fall they may often be
seen.

( 185 )

HERBS.

A GREAT green book, whose broad pages are illumi-
nated with flowers, lies open at the feet of Londoners.
This volume, without further preface, lies ever open
at Kew Gardens, and is most easily accessible from
every part of the metropolis. A short walk from Kew
station brings the visitor to Cumberland Gate. Best-
ing for a moment upon the first seat that presents
itself, it is hard to realize that London has but just
been quitted.

Green foliage around, green grass beneath, a
pleasant sensation — not silence, but absence of jarring
sound — blue sky overhead, streaks and patches of
sunshine where the branches admit the rays, wide,
cool shadows, and clear, sweet atmosphere. High in
a lime tree, hidden from view by the leaves, a chiff-
chaff sings continually, and from the distance comes
the softer note of a thrush. On the close-mown grass
a hedge-sparrow is searching about within a few yards,
and idle insects float to and fro, visible against the
background of a dark yew tree — they could not be
seen in the glare of the sunshine. The peace of green
things reigns.

It is not necessary to go further in; this spot at
the very entrance is equally calm and still, for there

186 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

is no margin of partial disturbance — repose begins at
the edge. Perhaps it is best to be at once content,
and to move no further ; to remain, like the lime tree,
in one spot, with the sunshine and the sky, to close
the eyes and listen to the thrush. Something, how-
ever, urges exploration.

The majority of visitors naturally follow the path,
and go round into the general expanse; but I will
turn from here sharply to the right, and crossing th&
sward there is, after a few steps only, another enclosing
wall. Within this enclosure, called the Herbaceous
Ground, heedlessly passed and perhaps never heard
of by the thousands who go to see the Palm Houses,
lies to me the real and truest interest of Kew. For
here is a living dictionary of English wild flowers.

The meadow and the cornfield, the river, the moun-
tain and the woodland, the seashore, the very waste
place by the roadside, each has sent its peculiar
representatives, and glancing for the moment, at
large, over the beds, noting their number and extent,
remembering that the specimens are not in the mass
but individual, the first conclusion is that our own
country is the true Flowery Land.

But the immediate value of this wonderful garden is
in the clue it gives to the most ignorant, enabling any
one, no matter how unlearned, to identify the flower
that delighted him or her, it may be, years ago, in
far-away field or copse. Walking up and down the
green paths between the beds, you are sure to come
upon it presently, with its scientific name duly
attached and its natural order labelled at the end of
the patch.

HEEBS. 181

Had I only known of this place in former days how
gladly I would have walked the hundred miles hither !
For the old folk, the aged men and countrywomen,
have for the most part forgotten, if they ever knew,
the plants and herbs in the hedges they had fre-
quented from childhood. Some few, of course, they
can tell you; but the majority are as unknown to
them, except by sight, as the ferns of New Zealand or
the heaths of the Cape.

Since books came about, since the railways and
science destroyed superstition, the lore of herbs has
in great measure decayed and been lost. The names
of many of the commonest herbs are quite forgotten
— they are weeds, and nothing more. But here these
things are preserved ; in London, the centre of civili-
zation and science, is a garden which restores the
ancient knowledge of the monks and the witches of the
villages.

Thus, on entering to-day, the first plant which I
observed is hellebore — a not very common wild herb
perhaps, but found in places, and a traditionary use
of which is still talked of in the country, a use which
I must forbear to mention. What would the sturdy
mowers whom I once watched cutting their way
steadily through the tall grass in June say, could
they see here the black knapweed cultivated as a
garden treasure? Its hard woody head with purple
florets lifted high above the ground, was greatly
disliked by them, as, too, the blue scabious, and
indeed most other flowers. The stalks of such plants
were so much harder to mow than the grass.

Feathery yarrow sprays, which spring up by the

188 NATURE NEAR LONDON,

wayside and wherever the foot of man passes, as
at the gateway, are here. White and lilac-tinted
yarrow flowers grow so thickly along the roads
round London as often to form a border between
the footpath and the bushes of the hedge. Dandelions
lift their yellow heads, classified and cultivated —
the same dandelions whose brilliant colour is admired
and imitated by artists, and whose prepared roots are
still in use in country places to improve the flavour
of coffee.

Groundsel, despised groundsel — the weed which
cumbers the garden patch, and is hastily destroyed,
is here fully recognized. These harebells — they have
flowered a little earlier than in their wild state — how
many scenes they recall to memory! We found
them on the tops of the glorious Downs when the
wheat was ripe in the plains and the earth beneath
seemed all golden. Some, too, concealed themselves
on the pastures behind those bunches of tough grass
the cattle left untouched. And even in cold November,
when the mist lifted, while the dewdrops clustered
thickly on the grass, one or two hung their heads
under the furze.

Hawkweeds, which many mistake for dandelions ;
cowslips, in seed now, and primroses, with foreign
primulas around them and enclosed by small hurdles,
foxgloves, some with white and some with red flowers,
all these have their story and are intensely English.
Eough-leaved comfrey of the side of the river and
brook, one species of which is so much talked of
as better forage than grass, is here, its bells opening.

Borage, whose leaves float in the claret-cup ladled

HERBS. 189-

out to thirsty travellers at the London railway
stations in the hot weather ; knotted figwort, common
in ditches ; Aaron's Kod, found in old gardens ;
lovely veronicas ; mints and calamints whose leaves,
if touched, scent the fingers, and which grow every-
where by cornfield and hedgerow.

This bunch of wild thyme once again calls up a
vision of the Downs ; it is not so thick and strong,
and it lacks that cushion of herbage which so often
marks the site of its growth on the noble slopes of
the hills, and along the sward-grown fosse of ancient
earthworks, but it is wild thyme, and that is enough.
From this bed of varieties of thyme there rises up
a pleasant odour which attracts the bees. Bees and
humble-bees, indeed, buzz everywhere, but they are
much too busily occupied to notice you or me.

Is there any difference in the taste of London
honey and in that of the country ? From the im-
mense quantity of garden flowers about the metropolis
it would seem possible for a distinct flavour, not
perhaps preferable, to be imparted. Lavender, of
which old housewives were so fond, and which is still
the best of preservatives, comes next, and self-heal
is just coming out in flower; the reapers have, I
believe, forgotten its former use in curing the gashes
sometimes inflicted by the reaphook. The reaping
machine has banished such memories from the
stubble. Nightshades border on the potato, the
flowers of both almost exactly alike ; poison and food
growing side by side and of the same species.

There are tales still told in the villages of this
deadly and enchanted mandragora ; the lads some-

190 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

times go to the churchyards to search for it. Plan-
tains and docks, wild spurge, hops climbing up a dead
fir tree, a well-chosen pole for them—nothing is
omitted. Even the silver weed, the dusty-looking
foliage which is thrust aside as you walk on the
footpath by the road is here labelled with truth as
" cosmopolitan " of habit.

Bird's-foot lotus, another Downside plant, lights up
the stones put to represent rockwork with its yellow.
Saxifrage, and stone-crop and house-leek are here
in variety. Buttercups occupy a whole patch — a
little garden to themselves. What would the hay-
makers say to such a sight ? Little, too, does the
mower reck of the number, variety, and beauty of
the grasses in a single armful of swathe, such as he
gathers up to cover his jar of ale with and keep it
cool by the hedge. The bennets, the flower of the
grass, on their tall stalks, go down in numbers as
countless as the sand of the seashore before his
scythe.

But here the bennets are watched and tended, the
weeds removed from around them, and all the grasses
of the field cultivated as affectionately as the finest
rose. There is something cool and pleasant in this
green after the colours of the herbs in flower, though
each grass is but a bunch, yet it has with it something
of the sweetness of the meadows by the brooks.
Juncus, the rush, is here, a sign often welcome to
cattle, for they know that water must be near; the
bunch is cut down, and the white pith shows, but it
will speedily be up again ; horse-tails, too, so thick in
marshy places — one small species is abundant in the

HERBS. 191

ploughed fields of Surrey, and must be a great trouble
to the farmers, for the land is sometimes quite hidden
.by it.

In the adjoining water tank are the principal flowers
and plants which flourish in brook, river, and pond.
This yellow iris flowers in many streams about London,
and the water parsnip's pale green foliage waves at
the very bottom, for it will grow with the current
right over it as well as at the side. Water plantain
grows in every pond near the metropolis; there is
some just outside these gardens, in a wet ha-ha.

The huge water docks in the centre here flourish at
the verge of the adjacent Thames ; the marsh marigold,
now in seed, blooms in April in the damp furrows of
meadows close up to town. But in this flower-pot,
sunk so as to be in the water, and yet so that the rim
may prevent it from spreading and coating the entire
tank with green, is the strangest of all, actually
duckweed. The still ponds, always found close to
cattle yards, are in summer green from end to end with
this weed. I recommend all country folk who come
up to town in summer time to run down here just to
see duckweed cultivated once in their lives.

In front of an ivy-grown museum there is a kind of
bowling-green, sunk somewhat below the general
surface, where in similar beds may be found the most
of those curious old herbs which for seasoning or salad,
or some use or superstition, were famous in ancient
English households. Not one of them but has its
associations. " There's rue for you," to begin with ;
we all know who that herb is for ever connected
with.

192 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

There is marjoram and sage, clary, spearmint, pep-
permint, salsify, elecampane, tansy, assafcetida, corian-
der, angelica, caper spurge, lamb's lettuce, and sorrel.
Mugwort, southernwood, and wormwood are still to be
found in old gardens ; they stand here side by side.
Monkshood, horehound, henbane, vervain (good against
the spells of witches), feverfew, dog's mercury, bistort,
woad, and so on, all seem like relics of the days of
black-letter books. All the while greenfinches are
singing happily in the trees without the wall.

This is but the briefest resume; for many long
summer afternoons would be needed even to glance
at all the wild flowers that bloom in June. Then you
must come once at least a month, from March to
September, as the flowers succeed each other, to read
the place aright. It is an index to every meadow and
cornfield, wood, heath, and river in the country, and
by means of the plants of the same species to the
flowers of the world. Therefore, the Herbaceous
Ground seems to me a place that should on no account
be passed by. And the next place is the Wilderness —
that is, the Forest.

On the way thither an old-fashioned yew hedge may
be seen round about a vast glasshouse. Outside, on
the sward, there are fewer wild flowers growing wild
than might perhaps be expected, owing in some degree,
no doubt, to the frequent mowing, except under the
trees, where again the constant shadow does not suit
all. By the ponds, in the midst of trees, and near the
river, there is a little grass, however, left to itself, in
which in June there were some bird's-foot lotus,
veronica, hawkweeds, ox-eye daisy, knapweed, and

HEEBS. 193

buttercups. Standing by these ponds, I heard a
cuckoo call, and saw a rook sail over them ; there was
no other sound but that of the birds and the merry
laugh of children rolling down the slopes.

The midsummer hum was audible above ; the
honeydew glistened on the leaves of the limes. There
is a sense of repose in the mere aspect of large trees
in groups and masses of quiet foliage. Their breadth
of form steadies the roving eye, the rounded slopes,
the wide sweeping outline of these hills of green
boughs, induce an inclination, like them, to rest. To
recline upon the grass and with half-closed eyes gaze
upon them is enough.

The delicious silence is not the silence of night, of
lifelessness ; it is the lack of jarring, mechanical
noise ; it is not silence but the sound of leaf and grass
gently stroked by the soft and tender touch of the
summer air. It is the sound of happy finches, of
the slow buzz of humble-bees, of the occasional splash
of a fish, or the call of a moorhen. Invisible in the
brilliant beams above, vast legions of insects crowd
the sky, but the product of their restless motion is a
slumberous hum.

These sounds are the real silence; just as a tiny
ripple of the water and the swinging of the shadows
as the boughs stoop are the real stillness. If they
were absent, if it was the Boundlessness and stillness
of stone, the mind would crave for something. But
these fill and content it. Thus reclining, the storm
and stress of life dissolve — there is no thought, no
care, no desire. Somewhat of the Nirvana of the
earth beneath — the earth which for ever produces and

194 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

receives back again and yet is for ever at rest — enters
into and soothes the heart.

The time slips by, a rook emerges from yonder mass
of foliage, and idly floats across, and is hidden in
another tree. A whitethroat rises from a bush and
nervously discourses, gesticulating with wings and
tail, for a few moments. But this is not possible for
long ; the immense magnetism of London, as I have
said before, is too near. There comes the quick short
beat of a steam launch shooting down the river hard
by, and the dream is over. I rise and go on again.

Already one of the willows planted about the pond
is showing the yellow leaf, before midsummer. It
reminds me of the inevitable autumn. In October
these ponds, now apparently deserted, will be full of
moorhens. I have seen and heard but one to day,
but as the autumn comes on they will be here again,
feeding about the island, or searching on the sward by
the shore. Then, too, among the beeches that lead
from hence towards the fanciful pagoda the squirrels
will be busy. There are numbers of them, and their
motions may be watched with ease. I turn down by
the river ; in the ditch at the foot of the ha-ha wall is
plenty of duckweed, the Lemna of the tank.

A little distance away, and almost on the shore, as it
seems, of the Thames, is a really noble horse-chestnut,
whose boughs, untouched by cattle, come sweeping
down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to lie
on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their
contact. Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of
encampments in Hindostan beneath banyan trees,
where white tent cloths are stretched from branch to

HERBS. 195

branch. Tent cloths might be stretched here in
similar manner, and would enclose a goodly space.
Or in the boughs above, a savage's tree hut might be
built, and yet scarcely be seen.

My roaming and uncertain steps next bring me
under a plane, and I am forced to admire it ; I do not
like planes, but this is so straight of trunk, so vast of
size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose
but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper
bough, makes off as I glance up. But the trees con-
stantly afford unexpected pleasure ; you wander among
the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the
trees which the Eed Indian haunts, now by those
which grow on Himalayan slopes. The interest lies
in the fact that they are trees, not shrubs or mere
saplings, but timber trees which cast a broad shadow.

So great is their variety and number that it is not
always easy to find an oak or an elm ; there are
plenty, but they are often lost in the foreign forest.
Yet every English shrub and bush is here ; the haw-
thorn, the dogwood, the wayfaring tree, gorse and
broom, and here is a round plot of heather. Weary
at last, I rest again near the Herbaceous Ground, as
the sun declines and the shadows lengthen.

As evening draws on, the whistling of blackbirds
and the song of thrushes seem to come from every-
where around. The trees are full of them. Every
few moments a blackbird passes over, flying at some
height, from the villa gardens and the orchards
without. The song increases ; the mellow whistling
is without intermission; but the shadow has nearly
reached the wall, and I must go.

196 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

TREES ABOUT TOWN. •

JUST outside London there is a circle of fine, large
houses, each standing Jn its own grounds, highly
rented, and furnished with every convenience money
can supply. If any one will look at the trees and
shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house,
chosen at random for an example, and make a list of
them, he may then go round the entire circumference
of Greater London, mile after mile, many days'
journey, and find the list ceaselessly repeated.

There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, arau-
carias, laurels, planes, beds of rhododendrons, and so
on. There are various other foreign shrubs and trees
whose names have not become familiar, and then the
next grounds contain exactly the same, somewhat
differently arranged. Had they all been planted by
Act of Parliament, the result could scarcely have been
more uniform.

If, again, search were made in these enclosures for
English trees and English shrubs, it would be found
that none have been introduced. The English trees,
timber trees, that are there, grew before the house
was built ; for the rest, the products of English woods

TREES ABOUT TOWN. 197

and hedgerows have been carefully excluded. The
law is, " Plant planes, laurels, and rhododendrons ;
root up everything natural to this country."

To those who have any affection for our own wood-
lands this is a pitiful spectacle, produced, too, by the
expenditure of large sums of money. Will no one
break through the practice, and try the effect of
English trees ? There is no lack of them, and they
far excel anything yet imported in beauty and
grandeur.

Though such suburban grounds mimic the isolation
and retirement of ancient country houses surrounded
with parks, the distinctive feature of the ancient
houses is omitted. There are no massed bodies, as
it were, of our own trees to give a substance to the
view. Are young oaks ever seen in those grounds so
often described as park-like ? Some time since it was
customary for the builder to carefully cut down every
piece of timber on the property before putting in the
foundations.

Fortunately, the influence of a better taste now
preserves such1 trees as chance to be growing on the
site at the moment it is purchased. These remain,
but no others are planted. A young oak is not to be
seen. The oaks that are there drop their acorns in
vain, for if one takes root it is at once cut off ; it
would spoil the laurels. It is the same with elms ;
the old elms are decaying, and no successors are
provided.

As for ash, it is doubtful if a young ash is anywhere
to be found ; if so, it is an accident. The ash is even
rarer than the rest. In their places are put more*

198 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

laurels, cedar deodaras, various evergreens, rhodo-
dendrons, planes. How tame and insignificant are
these compared with the oak ! Thrice a year the oaks
become beautiful in a different way.

In spring the opening buds give the tree a ruddy
hue ; in summer the great head of green is not to be
surpassed ; in autumn, with the falling leaf and
acorn, they appear buff and brown. The nobility of
the oak casts the pitiful laurel into utter insignificance.
With elms it is the same ; they are teddish with
flower and bud very early in the year, the fresh leaf
is a tender green ; in autumn they are sometimes one
mass of yellow.

Ashes change from almost black to a light green,
then a deeper green, and again light green and
yellow. Where is the foreign evergreen in the com-
petition ? Put side by side, competition is out of
the question : you have only to get an artist to
paint the oak in its three phases to see this. There
is less to be said against the deodara than the rest,
as it is a graceful tree ; but it is not English in any
sense.

The point, however, is that the foreigners oust the
English altogether. Let the cedar and the laurel,
and the whole host of invading evergreens, be put
aside by themselves, in a separate and detached
shrubbery, maintained for the purpose of exhibiting
strange growths. Let them not crowd the lovely
English trees out of the place. Planes are much
planted now, with ill effect ; the blotches where the
bark peels, the leaves which lie on the sward like
*brown leather, the branches wide apart and giving

TEEES ABOUT TOWN. 199

no shelter to birds — in short, the whole ensemble of
the plane is unfit for our country.

It was selected for London plantations, as the
Thames Embankment, because its peeling bark was
believed to protect it against the deposit of sooty
particles, and because it grows quickly. For use in
London itself it may be preferable : for semi-country
seats, as the modern houses surrounded with their
own grounds assume to be, it is unsightly. It has no
association. No one has seen a plane in a hedgerow,
or a wood, or a copse. There are no fragments of
English history clinging to it as there are to the oak.

If trees of the plane class be desirable, sycamores
may be planted, as they have in a measure become
acclimatised. If trees that grow fast are required,
there are limes and horse-chestnuts; the lime will
run a race with any tree. The lime, too, has a pale
yellow blossom, to which bees resort in numbers,
mailing a pleasant hum, which seems the natural
accompaniment of summer sunshine. Its leaves are
put forth early.

Horse-chestnuts, too, grow quickly and without any
attention, the bloom is familiar, and acknowledged to
be fine, and in autumn the large sprays of leaves take
orange and even scarlet tints. The plane is not to be
mentioned beside either of them. Other trees as well
as the plane would have flourished on the Thames
Embankment, in consequence of the current of fresh
air caused by the river. Imagine the Embankment
with double rows of oaks, elms, or beeches ; or, if
not, even with limes or horse-chestnuts ! To these
certainly birds would have resorted — possibly rooks,

200 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

which do not fear cities. On such a site the experi-
ment would have been worth making.

If in the semi-country seats fast-growing trees are
needed, there are, as I have observed, the lime and
horse-chestnut; and if more variety be desired, add
the Spanish chestnut and the walnut. The Spanish
chestnut is a very fine tree; the walnut, it is true,
grows slowly. If as many beeches as cedar deodaras
and laurels and planes were planted in these grounds,
in due course of time the tap of the woodpecker would
be heard : a sound truly worth ten thousand laurels.
At Kew, far closer to town than many of the semi-
country seats are now, all our trees flourish in per-
fection.

Hardy birches, too, will grow in thin soil. Just
compare the delicate drooping boughs of birch — they
could not have been more delicate if sketched with a
pencil — compare these with the gaunt planes !

Of all the foreign shrubs that have been brought to
these shores, there is not one that presents us with so
beautiful a spectacle as the bloom of the common old
English hawthorn in May. The mass of blossom, the
pleasant fragrance, its divided and elegant leaf, place
it far above any of the importations. Besides which,
the traditions and associations of the May give it a
human interest.

The hawthorn is a part of natural English life —
country life. It stands side by side with the English-
man, as the palm tree is pictured side by side with
the Arab. You cannot pick up an old play, or book
of the time when old English life was in the prime,
without finding some reference to the hawthorn.

TREES ABOUT TOWN. 201

There is nothing of this in the laurel, or any shrub
whatever that may be thrust in with a ticket to tell
you its name; it has a ticket because it has no
interest, or else you would know it.

For use there is nothing like hawthorn; it will
trim into a thick hedge, defending the enclosure from
trespassers, and warding off the bitter winds; or it
will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab —
the common, despised crab-apple — in spring is
covered with blossom, such a mass of blossom that
it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever
see a plane or a laurel look like that ?

How pleasant, too, to see the clear white flower of
the blackthorn come out in the midst of the bitter
easterly breezes ! It is like a white handkerchief
beckoning to the sun to come. There will not be
much more frost; if the wind is bitter to-day, the
sun is rapidly gaining power. Probably, if a black-
thorn bush were by any chance discovered in the
semi-parks or enclosures alluded to, it would at once
be rooted out as an accursed thing. The very
brambles are superior ; there is the flower, the sweet
berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves — three
things in succession.

What can the world produce equal to the June
rose? The common briar, the commonest of all,
offers a flower which, whether in itself, or the moment
of its appearance at the juncture of all sweet summer
things, or its history and associations, is not to be
approached by anything a millionaire could purchase.
The labourer casually gathers it as he goes to his
work in the field, and yet none of the rich families

202 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

whose names are synonymous with wealth can get
anything to equal it if they ransack the earth.

After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel,
and make filbert walks. Up and down such walks
men strolled with rapiers by their sides while our
admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with
culverin and demi-cannon, and looked at the sun-
dial and adjourned for a game at bowls, wishing that
they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of
peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees,
then, and make filbert walks. All these are like old
story books, and the old stories are always best.

Still, there are others for variety, as the wild
guelder rose, which produces heavy bunches of red
berries ; dogwood, whose leaves when frost-touched
take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly
acid fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting
the elder, but putting it at the outside, because,
though flowering, the scent is heavy, and because
the elder was believed of old time to possess some of
the virtue now attributed to the blue gum, and to
neutralise malaria by its own odour.

For colour add the wild broom and some furze.
Those who have seen broom in full flower, golden to
the tip of every slender bough, cannot need any
persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked
with yellow when the skies are dark and storms sweep
around, besides its prime display. Let wild clematis
climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come after
these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick
changeless leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one
ever gathejs a spray.

TREES ABOUT TOWN. 203

Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in them-
selves they afford a rich flower. It is not the rhodo-
dendron, but the abuse of it, which must be protested
against. Whether the soil suits or not — and, for the
most part, it does not suit — rhododendrons are thrust
in everywhere. Just walk in amongst them — behind
the show — and look at the spindly, crooked stems,
straggling how they may, and then look at the earth
under them, where not a weed even will grow. The
rhododendron is admirable in its place, but it is often
overdone and a failure, and has no right to exclude
those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign
shrubs about these semi-country seats look exactly
like the stiff and painted little wooden trees that are
sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are the
same colour all the year round.

Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is
delighted with cowslips on the banks where the sun-
light comes, with blue-bells, or earlier with anemones
and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the
semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected
assumption of countryness, and there is not one of
these. The fern is actually purposely eradicated —
just think ! Purposely ! Though indeed they would
not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and
laurels, cold-blooded laurels. They will grow under
hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble bushes.

If there chance to be a little pond or " fountain,"
there is no such thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush.
How the rushes would be hastily hauled out and
hurled away with execrations !

Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs,

204 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

and plants, they also attract the birds, without which
the grandest plantation is a vacancy, and another
interest, too, arises from watching the progress of
their growth and the advance of the season. Our
own trees and shrubs literally keep pace with the
stars which shine in our northern skies. An astro-
nomical floral almanack might almost be constructed,
showing how, as the constellations marched on by
night the buds and leaves and flowers appeared
by day.

The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western
sky after ruling the winter heavens, and the higher
that red Arcturus rises, so the buds thicken, open,
and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the
early evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the
seed vessels of the flowers take the place of the petals.
The coincidences of floral and bird life, and of these
with the movements of the heavens, impart a sense
of breadth to their observation.

It is not only the violet or the anemone, there are
the birds coming from immense distances to enjoy
the summer with us ; there are the stars appearing in
succession, so that the most distant of objects seems
brought into connection with the nearest, and the
world is made one. The sharp distinction, the line
artificially drawn between things, quite disappears
when they are thus associated.

Birds, as just remarked, are attracted by our own
trees and shrubs. Oaks are favourites with rooks and
wood-pigeons ; blackbirds whistle in them in spring ;
if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to
come under the oak; jays visit them. Elms are

TREES ABOUT TOWN. 205

resorted to by most of the larger birds. Ash planta-
tions attract wood-pigeons and turtledoves. Thrushes
are fond of the ash, and sing much on its boughs.
The beech is the woodpecker's tree so soon as it grows
old — birch one of the missel-thrush's.

In blackthorn the long-tailed tit builds the domed
nest every one admires. Under the cover of brambles
white-throats build. Nightingales love hawthorn,
and so does every bird. Plant hawthorn, and almost
every bird will come to it, from the wood-pigeon down
to the wren. Do not clear away the fallen branches
and brown leaves, sweeping the plantation as if it
were the floor of a ball-room, for it is just the tangle
and the wilderness that brings the birds, and they
like the disarray.

If evergreens are wanted, there are the yew, the
box, and holly — all three well sanctioned by old
custom. Thrushes will come for the yew berries,
and birds are fond of building in the thick cover of
high box hedges. Notwithstanding the prickly leaves,
they slip in and out of the holly easily. A few bunches
of rushes and sedges, with some weeds and aquatic
grasses, allowed to [grow about a pond, will presently
bring moorhens. Bare stones —perhaps concrete —
will bring nothing.

If a bough falls into the water, let it stay ; sparrows
will perch on it to drink. If a sandy drinking-place
can be made for them the number of birds that will
come in the course of the day will be surprising.

Kind-hearted people, when winter is approaching,
should have two posts sunk in their grounds, with
planks across at the top ; a raised platform with the

206 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

edges projecting beyond the posts, so that cats cannot
climb up, and of course higher than a cat can spring.
The crumbs cast out upon this platform would gather
crowds of birds ; they will come to feel at home, and
in spring time will return to build and sing.

207

TO BRIGHTON.

THE smooth express to Brighton has scarcely, as it
seems, left the metropolis when the banks of the
railway become coloured with wild flowers. Seen for
a moment in swiftly passing, they border the line
like a continuous garden. Driven from the fields by
plough and hoe, cast out from the pleasure-grounds
of modern houses, pulled up and hurled over the wall
to wither as accursed things, they have taken refuge
on the embankment and the cutting.

There they can flourish and ripen their seeds, little
harassed even by the scythe and never by grazing
cattle. So it happens that, extremes meeting, the
wild flower, with its old-world associations, often grows
most freely within a few feet of the wheels of the
locomotive. Purple heathbells gleam from shrub -like
bunches dotted along the slope; purple knapweeds
lower down in the grass ; blue scabious, yellow hawk-
weeds where the soil is thinner, and harebells on the
very summit ; these are but a few upon which the eye
lights while gliding by.

Glossy thistledown, heedless whither it goes, comes
in at the open window. Between thickets of broom
there is a glimpse down into a meadow shadowed by

208 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the trees of a wood. It is bordered with the cool
green of brake fern, from which a rabbit has come
forth to feed, and a pheasant strolls along with a mind,
perhaps, to the barley yonder. Or a fox-glove lifts
its purple spire; or woodbine crowns the bushes.
The sickle has gone over, and the poppies which grew
so thick a while ago in the corn no longer glow like
a scarlet cloak thrown on the ground. But red spots
in waste places and by the ways are where they have
escaped the steel.

A wood-pigeon keeps pace with the train — his
vigorous pinions can race against an engine, but
cannot elude the hawk. He stops presently among
the trees. How pleasant it is from the height of the
embankment to look down upon the tops of the oaks !
The stubbles stretch away, crossed with bands of
green roots where the partridges are hiding. Among
flags and weeds the moorhens feed fearlessly as we
roll over the stream : then comes a cutting, and more
heath and hawkweed, harebell, and bramble bushes
red with unripe berries.

Flowers grow high up the sides of the quarries ;
flowers cling to the dry, crumbling chalk of the cliff-
like cutting ; flowers bloom on the verge above, against
the line of the sky, and over the dark arch of the
tunnel. This, it is true, is summer ; but it is the
same in spring. Before a dandelion has shown in
the meadow, the banks of the railway are yellow
with coltsfoot. After a time the gorse flowers every-
where along them ; but the golden broom overtops all,
perfect thickets of broom glowing in the sunlight.

Presently the copses are azure with bluebells, among

TO BRIGHTON. 200

which the brake is thrusting itself up ; others, again,
are red -with ragged robins, and the fields adjacent fill
the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock. The
note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the
train, and the larks may be seen, if not heard, rising
high over the wheat. Some birds, indeed, find the
bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to
build their nests.

Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on
the telegraph wires ; from that elevation they pounce
down on their prey, and return again to the wire.
There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph
wires for this purpose one spring only a short distance
beyond noisy Clapham Junction. Another pair came
back several seasons to a particular part of the wires,
near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the
wire equally near London.

The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which,
soon after passing Eedhill, stretches away on the right.
It seems to us in the train to extend from the foot of
a great bluff there to the first rampart of the still dis-
tant South Downs. In the evening that haze will be
changed to a flood of purple light veiling the horizon.
Fitful glances at the newspaper or the novel pass the
time ; but now I can read no longer, for I know, with-
out any marks or tangible evidence, that the hills are
drawing near. There is always hope in the hills.

The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the
vision ; but it penetrates deeper than that. There is
a dust that chokes the spirit, and it is this that makes
the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk so
wooden ; the very rustiness of the iron railings about

P

210 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the offices sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened
walls (yet without shadow) thrust back the sympathies
•which are ever trying to cling to the inanimate things
around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window
— a wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the
summer day. It is easy to tell where that came from
• — silently the Downs have stolen into sight.

So easy is the outline of the ridge, so broad and
flowing are the slopes, that those who have not
mounted them cannot grasp the idea of their real
height and steepness. The copse upon the summit
yonder looks but a short stroll distant ; how much you
would be deceived did you attempt to walk thither !
The ascent here in front seems nothing, but you must
rest before you have reached a third of the way up.
Ditchling Beacon there, on the left, is the very highest
above the sea of the whole mighty range, but so great
is the mass of the hill that the glance does not
realize it.

Hope dwells there, somewhere, mayhap, in the
breeze, in the sward, or the pale cups of the harebells.
Now, having gazed at these, we can lean back on the
cushions and wait patiently for the sea. There is
nothing else, except the noble sycamores on the left
hand just before the train draws into the station.

The clean dry brick pavements are scarcely less
crowded than those of London, but as you drive
through the town, now and then there is a glimpse
of a greenish mist afar off between the houses. The
green mist thickens in one spot almost at the horizon;
or is it the dark nebulous sails of a vessel ? Then the
foam suddenly appears close at hand — a white streak

TO BRIGHTON. 211

seems to run from house to house, reflecting the sun-
light ; and this is Brighton.

" How different the sea looks away from the pier ! "
It is a new pleasure to those who have been full of
gaiety to see, for once, the sea itself. Westwards, a
mile beyond Hove, beyond the coastguard cottages,
turn aside from the road, and go up on the rough
path along the ridge of shingle. The hills are away
on the right, the sea on the left ; the yards of the
ships in the basin slant across the sky in front.

With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm
and gleaming, runs a little way up the side of the
groyne, and again retires. There is scarce a gurgle
or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and
smooth where the storms have worn them with pebbles.
From a grassy spot ahead a bird rises, marked with
white, and another follows it ; they are wheatears ;
they frequent the land by the low beach in the
autumn.

A shrill but feeble pipe is the cry of the sandpiper,
disturbed on his moist feeding-ground. Among the
stones by the waste places there are pale-green
wrinkled leaves, and the large yellow petals of the sea-
poppy. The bright colour is pleasant, but it is a
flower best left ungathered, for its odour is not sweet.
On the wiry sward the light pink of the sea-daisies
(or thrift) is dotted here and there : of these gather
as you will. The presence even of such simple flowers,
of such well-known birds, distinguishes the solitary
from the trodden beach. The pier is in view, but the
sea is different here.

Drive eastwards along the cliffs to the rough steps

212 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

cut down to the beach, descend to the shingle, and
stroll along the shore to Eottingdean. The buttresses
of chalk shut out the town if you go to them, and rest
near the large pebbles heaped at the foot. There is
nothing but the white cliff, the green sea, the sky, and
the slow ships that scarcely stir.

In the spring, a starling comes to his nest in a cleft
of the cliff above ; he shoots over from the dizzy edge,
spreads his wings, borne up by the ascending air, and
in an instant is landed in his cave. On the sward
above, in the autumn, the yellow lip of the toad-flax,
spotted with orange, peers from the grass as you rest
and gaze — how far ? — out upon the glorious plain.

Or go up on the hill by the race-course, the highest
part near the sea, and sit down there on the turf. If
the west or south wind blow ever so slightly the low
roar of the surge floats up, mingling with the rustle
of the corn stacked in shocks on the slope. There
inhale unrestrained the breeze, the sunlight, and the
subtle essence which emanates from the ocean. For
the loneliest of places are on the borders of a gay
crowd, and thus in Brighton — the by-name for all
that is crowded and London-like — it is possible to
dream on the sward and on the shore.

In the midst, too, of this most modern of cities,
with its swift, luxurious service of Pullman cars, its
piers, and social pleasures, there exists a collection
which in a few strokes, as it were, sketches the ways
and habits and thoughts of old rural England. It is
not easy to realize in these days of quick transit and
still quicker communication that old England was
mostly rural.

TO BRIGHTON. 213

There were towns, of course, seventy years ago, but
even the towns were penetrated with what, for want
of a better word, may be called country sentiment.
Just the reverse is now the case; the most distant
hamlet which the wanderer in his autumn ramblings
may visit, is now more or less permeated with the
feelings and sentiment of the city. No written history
has preserved the daily life of the men who ploughed
the Weald behind the hills there, or tended the sheep
•on the Downs, before our beautiful land was crossed
with iron roads ; while news, even from the field of
Waterloo, had to travel slowly. And, after all,
written history is but words, and words are not
tangible.

But in this collection of old English jugs, and mugs,
and bowls, and cups, and so forth, exhibited in the
Museum, there is the real presentment of old rural
England. Feeble pottery has ever borne the impress
of man more vividly than marble. From these they
quenched their thirst, over these they laughed and
joked, and gossiped, and sang old hunting songs till
the rafters rang, and the dogs under the table got up
and barked. Cannot you see them? The stubbles
are ready now once more for the sportsmen.

With long-barrelled flint-lock * guns they ranged
•over that wonderful map of the land which lies spread
cut at your feet as you look down from the Dyke.
There are already yellowing leaves ; they will be
brown after awhile, and the covers will be ready
once more for the visit of the hounds. The toast
upon this mug would be very gladly drunk by the
agriculturist of to-day in his silk hat and black

•214 NATURE NEAE LONDON.

coat. It is just what he has been wishing these many
seasons.

" Here's to thee, mine honest friend,
"Wishing these hard times to mend."

Hard times, then, are nothing new.

" It is good ale," is the inscription on another jug ;
that jug would be very welcome if so filled in many
a field this very day, "Better luck still" is a jug
motto which every one who reads it will secretly
respond to. Cock-fighting has gone by, but we are
even more than ever on the side of fair play, and in
that sense can endorse the motto, " May the best cock
win." A clip desires that fate should give

" Money to him who has spirit to use it,
And life to him who has courage to lose it."

A mug is moderate of wishes and somewhat
cynical : —

"A little health, a little wealth,
A little house, and freedom ;
And at the end a little friend,
And little cause to need him."

The toper, if he drank too deep, sometimes found a
frog or newt at the bottom (in china) — a hint not to be
too greedy. There seem to have been sad dogs about
in those days from the picture on this piece — one sniff-
ing regretfully at the bunghole of an empty barrel : —

" This cask when stored with gin I loved to taste,
But now a smell, alas ! must break my fast."

IJpon a cup a somewhat Chinese arrangement of
"words is found : —

More
for
do
I
shall
what

beer
my
trust
I
if
for

score
the
pay
must
you
and

Clarke
his
sent
has
maltster
the

TO BRIGHTON. 215

These parallel columns can be deciphered by
beginning at the last word, " the," on the right hand,
and reading up. With rude and sometimes grim
humour our forefathers seem to have been delighted.
The teapots of our great grandmothers are even more
amusingly inscribed and illustrated. At Gretna-green
the blacksmith is performing a " Eed Hot Marriage,"
using his anvil for the altar.

" Oh ! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains,
And tie us fast in wedlock's chains."

The china decorated with vessels and alluding to
naval matters shows how popular was the navy, and
how deeply everything concerning Nelson's men had
sunk into the minds of the people. Some of the line
of battle ships here represented are most cleverly
executed — every sail and rope and gun brought out
with a clearness which the best draughtsman could
hardly excel. It is a little hard, however, to preserve
the time-honoured imputation upon Jack's constancy
in this way on a jug : —

" A sailor's life's a pleasant life,

He freely roams from shore to shore ;
In every port he finds a wife —
What can a sailor wish for more ? "

Some enamoured potter having produced a master-
piece as a present to his lady destroyed the design, so
that the service he gave her might be unique. After
gazing at these curious old pieces, with dates of 1754,
1728, and so forth, the mind becomes attuned to such
times, and the jug with the inscription, " Claret,
1652," seems quite an easy and natural transition.

From the Brighton of to-day it is centuries back to
1754 ; but from 1754 to 1652 is but a year or two.

216 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

And after studying these shelves, and getting, as it
were, so deep down into the past, it is with a kind of
Kip Van Winkle feeling that you enter again into the
sunshine of the day. The fair upon the beach does
not seem quite real for a few minutes.

Before the autumn is too far advanced and the
skies are uncertain, a few hours should be given to
that massive Down which fronts the traveller from
London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the
sea-level. It is easy of access, the train carries you
to Hassock's Gate — the station is almost in a copse —
and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in
the centre of Ditchling village. Thence to the Down
itself the road is straight, and the walk no longer
than is always welcome after riding.

After leaving the cottages and gardens, the road
soon becomes enclosed with hedges and trees, a mere
country lane ; and how pleasant are the trees after the
bare shore and barren sea ! The hand of autumn
has browned the oaks, and has passed over the hedge,
reddening the haws. The north wind rustles the
dry hollow stalks of plants upon the mound, and there
is a sense of hardihood in the touch of its breath.

The light is brown, for a vapour conceals the sun
— it is not like a cloud, for it has no end or outline,
and it is high above where the summer blue was
lately. Or is it the buff leaves, the grey stalks, the
dun grasses, the ripe fruit, the mist which hides the
distance that makes the day so brown ? But the ditches
below are yet green with brooklime and rushes. By
a gateway stands a tall campanula or bell-flower, two
/eet high or nearly, with great bells of blue.

TO BRIGHTON. 217

A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but walking
with his crook as a staff, stays and turns a brown
face towards me when I ask him the way. He points
with his iron crook at a narrow line which winds up
the Down by some chalk-pits ; it is a footpath from
the corner of the road. Just by the corner the hedge
is grey with silky flocks of clematis ; the hawthorn is
hidden by it. Near by there is a bush, made up of
branches from five different shrubs and plants.

First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are fast
dropping; among this dogwood, with leaves darken-
ing ; between these a bramble bearing berries, some
red and some ripe, and yet a pink flower or two left.
Thrusting itself into the tangle, long woody bines of
bittersweet hang their clusters of red berries, and
above and over all the hoary clematis spreads its
beard, whitening to meet the winter. These five are
all intermixed and bound up together, flourishing in
a mass ; nuts and edible berries, semi-poisonous fruit,
flowers, creepers ; and hazel, with markings under
its outer bark like a gun-barrel.

This is the last of the plain. Now every step
exposes the climber to the force of the unchecked
wind. The harebells swing before it, the bennets
whistle, but the sward springs to the foot, and the
heart grows lighter as the height increases. The
ancient hill is alone with the wind. The broad
summit is left to scattered furze and fern cowering
under its shelter. A sunken fosse and earthwork
have slipped together. So lowly are they now after
these fourteen hundred years that in places the long
rough grass covers and conceals them altogether.

218 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and
the bennets do not whistle, yet gazing upwards at the
vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear the mass, as
it were, of the wind going over. Standing presently
at the edge of the steep descent looking into the
Weald, it seems as if the mighty blast rising from
that vast plain and glancing up the slope like an
arrow from a tree could lift me up and bear me
as it bears a hawk with outspread wings.

A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn
across the immense stage below like a curtain. There
is, indeed, a brown wood beneath ; but nothing more
is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague
uncertainty. From the north comes clown the wind,
out of the brown autumn light, from the woods below
and twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and current
is eight hundred feet deep.

Against my chest, coming up from the plough down
there (the old plough, with the shaft moving on a
framework with wheels), it hurls itself against the
green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at delay.
The ears are filled with a continuous sense of some-
thing rushing past ; the shoulders go back square ;
an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews. The air
goes through my coat as if it were gauze, and strokes
the skin like a brush.

The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls
about, and its cold push at the first causes a lifting
feeling in the chest — a gulp and pant — as if it were too
keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood meets,
it and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour.
I cannot drink enough of it. This is the north wind*

TO BE1GHTON. 210

High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing
higher still, suspended in the brown light. Turning
away at last and tracing the fosse, there is at the
point where it is deepest and where there is some
trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown
as flat as a hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or
against a wall — the effect, no doubt, of the winds.
Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and leaf-
less, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as
to form a shield against the breeze. On the lee of
this natural hurdle there are black charcoal fragments
and ashes, where a fire has burnt itself out ; the stick
still leans over on which was hung the vessel used
at this wild bivouac.

Descending again by the footpath, the spur of the
hill yonder looks larger and steeper and more
ponderous in the mist; it seems higher than this,
a not unusual appearance when the difference in
altitude is not very great. The level we are on seems
to us beneath the level in the distance, as the future
is higher than the present. In the hedge or scattered
bushes, half-way down by the chalk-pit, there grows
a spreading shrub — the wayfaring tree — bearing large,
broad, downy leaves and clusters of berries, some
red and some black, flattened at their sides. There
are nuts, too, here, and large sloes or wild bullace.
This Ditchling Beacon is, I think, the nearest and
the most accessible of the southern Alps from London;
it is so near it may almost be said to be in the
environs of the capital. But it is alone with the wind.

220 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD.

THE shepherd came down the hill carrying his great-
coat slung at his back upon his crook, and balanced
by the long handle projecting in front. He was very
ready and pleased to show his crook, which, however,
was not so symmetrical in shape as those which are
represented upon canvas. Nor was the handle
straight; it was a rough stick — the first, evidently,
that had come to hand.

As there were no hedges or copses near his walks,
he had to be content with this bent wand till he could
get a better. The iron crook itself he said was
made by a blacksmith in a village below. A good
crook was often made from the barrel of an old single-
barrel gun, such as in their decadence are turned over
to the birdkeepers.

About a foot of the barrel being sawn off at the
muzzle end, there was a tube at once to fit the staff
into, while the crook was formed by hammering the
tough metal into a curve upon the anvil. So the gun
— the very symbol of destruction — was beaten into the
pastoral crook, the emblem and implement of peace.
These crooks of village workmanship are now subject
.to competition from the numbers offered for sale at

THE SO UTHDO WN SHEPHERD. 221

the shops at the market towns, where scores of them
are hung up on show, all exactly alike, made to
pattern, as if stamped out by machinery.

Each village-made crook had an individuality, that
of the blacksmith— somewhat rude, perhaps, but
distinctive — the hand shown in the iron. While talk-
ing, a wheatear flew past, and alighted near the path
— a place they frequent. The opinion seems general
that wheatears are not so numerous as they used to
be. You can always see two or three on the Downs
in autumn, but the shepherd said years ago he had
heard of one man catching seventy dozen in a day.

Perhaps such wholesale catches were the cause of
the comparative deficiency at the present day, not
only by actual diminution of numbers, but in partially
diverting the stream of migration. Tradition is very
strong in birds (and all animated creatures) ; they
return annually in the face of terrible destruction, and
the individuals do not seem to comprehend the danger.
But by degrees the race at large becomes aware of and
acknowledges the mistake, and slowly the original
tracks are deserted. This is the case with water-fowl,
and even, some think, with sea-fish.

There was not so much game on the part of the
hills he frequented as he had known when he was
young, and with the decrease of the game the foxes
had become less numerous. There was less cover as
the furze was ploughed up. It paid, of course, better
to plough it up, and as much as an additional two
hundred acres on a single farm had been brought
under the plough in his time. Partridges had much
decreased, but there were still plenty of hares : he

:222 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

had known the harriers sometimes kill two dozen
a day.

Plenty of rahbits still remained in places. The
foxes' earths were in their burrows or sometimes
under a hollow tree, and when the word was sent
round the shepherds stopped them for the hunt very
early in the morning. Foxes used to be almost thick-
He had seen as many as six (doubtless the vixen and
cubs) sunning themselves on the cliffs at Beachy
Head, lying on ledges before their inaccessible breed-
ing places, in the face of the chalk.

At present he did not think there were more than
two there. They ascended and descended the cliff
with ease, though not, of course, the straight wall or
precipice. He had known them fall over and be
dashed to pieces, as when fighting on the edge, or in
winter by the snow giving way under them. As the
snow came drifting along the summit of the Down it
gradually formed a projecting eave or cornice, project-
ing the length of the arm, and frozen.

Something like this may occasionally be seen on
houses when the partially melted snow has frozen
again before it could quite slide off. Walking on this
at night, when the whole ground was white with snow,
and no part could be distinguished, the weight of the
fox as he passed a weak place caused it to give way,
and he could not save himself. Last winter he had
had two lambs, each a month old, killed by a fox
which ate the heads and left the bodies ; the fox
always eating the head first, severing it, whether of a
hare, rabbit, duck, or the tender lamb, and " cover-
ing"— digging a hole and burying— that which he

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD. 223

cannot finish. To the buried carcase the fox returns
the next night before he kills again.

His dog was a cross with a collie : the old sheep-
dogs were shaggier and darker. Most of the sheep-
dogs now used were crossed with the collie, either
with Scotch or French, and were very fast — too fast in
some respects. He was careful not to send them
much after the flock, especially after feeding, when, in
his own words, the sheep had "best walk slow then,
like folk," — like human beings, who are not to be
hastened after a meal. If he wished his dog to fetch
the flock, he pointed his arm in the direction he
wished the dog to go, and said, " Put her back."
Often it was to keep the sheep out of turnips or wheat,
there being no fences. But he made it a practice to
walk himself on the side where care was needed, so as
not to employ the dog unless necessary.

There is something almost Australian in the wide
expanse of South Down sheepwalks, and in the
number of the flocks, to those who have been accus-
tomed to the small sheltered meadows of the vales,
where forty or fifty sheep are about the extent of the
stock on many farms. The land, too, is rented at
colonial prices, but a few shillings per acre, so
different from the heavy meadow rents. But, then,
the sheep-farmer has to occupy a certain proportion
of arable land as well as pasture, and here his heavy
losses mainly occur.

There is nothing, in fact, in this country so care-
fully provided against as the possibility of an English
farmer becoming wealthy. Much downland is covered
with furze ; some seems to produce a grass too coarse,

224 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

so that the rent is really proportional. A sheep to an
acre is roughly the allowance.

From all directions along the roads the bleating
flocks concentrate at the right time upon the hillside
where the sheep-fair is held. You can go nowhere
in the adjacent town except uphill, and it needs no
hand-post to the fair to those who know a farmer
when they see him, the stream of folk tender thither
so plainly. It rains, as the shepherd said it would ;
the houses keep off the drift somewhat in the town,
but when this shelter is left behind, the sward of the
hilltop seems among the clouds.

The descending vapours close in the view on every
side. The actual field underfoot, the actual site
of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding valleys and
the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses
of grey mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may
lift as the breeze drives it along, and the bold, sweep-
ing curves of a distant hill appear, but immediately
the rain falls again and the outline vanishes. The
glance can only penetrate a few hundred yards ; all
beyond that becomes indistinct, and some cattle
standing higher up the hill are vague and shadowy.

Like a dew, the thin rain deposits a layer of tiny
globules on the coat ; the grass is white with them ;
hurdles, flakes, everything is as it were the eighth of an
inch deep in water. Thus on the hillside, surrounded
by the clouds, the fair seems isolated and afar off.
A great cart-horse is being trotted out before the little
street of booths to make him show his paces ; they
flourish the first thing at hand — a pole with a red
flag at the end — and the huge frightened animal

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD. 225

plunges hither and thither in clumsy terror. You
must look out for yourself and keep an eye over your
shoulder, except among the sheep-pens.

There are thousands of sheep, all standing with
their heads uphill. At the corner of each pen the
shepherd plants his crook upright : some of them
have long brown handles, and these are of hazel with
the bark on ; others are ash, and one of willow. At
the corners, too, just outside, the dogs are chained,
and, in addition, there is a whole row of dogs fastened
to the tent pegs. The majority of the dogs thus
collected together from many miles of the Downs are
either collies, or show a very decided trace of the
collie.

One old shepherd, an ancient of the ancients, grey
and bent, has spent so many years among his sheep
that he has lost all notice and observation — there is
no " speculation in his eye " for anything but his
sheep. In his blue smock frock, with his brown
umbrella, which he has had no time or thought to
open, he stands listening, all intent, to the conver-
sation of the gentlemen who are examining his pens.
He leads a young restless collie by a chain ; the links
are polished to a silvery brightness by continual
motion ; the collie cannot keep still ; now he runs
one side, now the other, bumping the old man, who
is unconscious of everything but the sheep.

At the verge of the pens there stand four oxen with
their yokes, and the long slender guiding rod of hazel
placed lightly across the necks of the two foremost.
They are quite motionless, except their eyes, and the
slender rod, so lightly laid across, will remain without

Q

226 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

falling. After traversing the whole field, if you return
you will find them exactly in the same position.
Some black cattle are scattered about on the high
ground in the mist, which thickens beyond them, and
fills up the immense hollow of the valley.

In the street of booths there are the roundabouts,
the swings, the rifle galleries — like shooting into the
mouth of a great trumpet — the shows, the cakes and
brown nuts and gingerbread, the ale barrels in a row,
the rude forms and trestle tables ; just the same, the
very same, we saw at our first fair five and twenty
years ago, and a hundred miles away. It is just the
same this year as last, like the ploughs and hurdles,
and the sheep themselves. There is nothing new
to tempt the ploughboy's pennies — nothing fresh to
stare at.

The same thing year after year, and the same
sounds — the dismal barrel organs, and brazen instru-
ments, and pipes, wailing, droning, booming. How
melancholy the inexpressible noise when the fair is
left behind, and the wet vapours are settling and
thickening around it ! But the melancholy is not in
the fair — the ploughboy likes it; it is in ourselves,
in the thought that thus, though the years go by,
so much of human life remains the same — the same
blatant discord, the same monotonous roundabout, the
same poor gingerbread.

The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the
ox's pace up and down the hillside. The South Down
plough could scarcely have been invented ; it must
have been put together bit by bit in the slow years —
slower than the ox ; it is the completed structure of

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD. 227

long experience. It is made of many pieces, chiefly
wood, fitted and shaped and worked, as it were,
together, well seasoned first, built up, like a ship, by
cunning of hand.

None of these were struck out — a hundred a minute
— by irresistible machinery ponderously impressing
its will on iron as a seal on wax — a hundred a minute,
and all exactly alike. These separate pieces which
compose the plough were cut, chosen, and shaped in
the wheelwright's workshop, chosen by the eye, guided
in its turn by long knowledge of wood, and shaped by
the living though hardened hand of man. So compli-
cated a structure could no more have been struck out
on paper in a deliberate and single plan than those
separate pieces could have been produced by a single
blow.

There are no machine lines — no lines filed out in
iron or cut by the lathe to the draughtsman's design,
drawn with straight-edge and ruler on paper. The
thing has been put together bit by bit : how many
thousand, thousand clods must have been turned in
the furrows before the idea arose, and the curve to be
given to this or that part grew upon the mind as the
branch grows on the tree ! There is not a sharp edge
or sharp corner in it ; it is all bevelled and smoothed
and fluted as if it had been patiently carved with a
knife, so that, touch it where you will, it handles
pleasantly.

In these curved lines and smoothness, in this per-
fect adaptability of means to end, there is the spirit of
art showing itself, not with colour or crayon, but
working in tangible material substance. The makers

228 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

of this plough — not the designer — the various makers,
who gradually put it together, had many things to
consider. The fields where it had to work were, for
the most part, on a slope, often thickly strewn with
stones which jar and fracture iron.

The soil was thin, scarce enough on the upper part
to turn a furrow, deepening to nine inches or so at
the bottom. So quickly does the rain sink in, and
so quickly does it dry, that the teams work in almost
every weather, while those in the vale are enforced to
idleness. Drain furrows were not needed, nor was it
desirable that the ground should be thrown up in
" lands," rising in the centre. Oxen were the draught
animals, patient enough, but certainly not nimble.
The share had to be set for various depths of soil.

All these are met by the wheel plough, and in addi-
tion it fulfils the indefinite and indefinable condition
of handiness. A machine may be apparently perfect,
a boat may seem on paper, and examined on principles,
the precise build, and yet when the one is set to work
and the other floated they may fail. But the wheel
plough, having grown up, as it were, out of the soil,
fulfils the condition of handiness.

This handiness, in fact, embraces a number of
minor conditions which can scarcely be reduced to
writing, but which constantly occur in practice, and
by which the component parts of the plough were
doubtless unconsciously suggested to the makers.
Each has its proper name. The framework on wheels
in front — the distinctive characteristic of the plough
— is called collectively " tacks," and the shafts of
the plough rest on it loosely, so that they swing or

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD. 229

work almost independently, not unlike a field gun
limbered up.

The pillars of the framework have numerous holes,
so that the plough can be raised or lowered, that the
share may dig deep or shallow. Then there is the
" cock-pin," the "road-bat" (a crooked piece of wood),
the "sherve -wright" (so pronounced) — shelvewright (?)
— the "rist," and spindle, besides, of course, the
usual coulter and share. When the oxen arrive at
the top of the field, and the first furrow is completed,
they stop, well knowing their duty, while the plough-
man moves the iron rist, and the spindle which keeps
it in position, to the other side, and moves the road-bat
so as to push the coulter aside. These operations are
done in a minute, and correspond in some degree to
turning the rudder of a ship. The object is that the
plough which has been turning the earth one way,
shall now (as it is reversed to go downhill) continue
to turn it that way. If the change were not effected
when the plough was swung round, the furrow would
be made opposite. Next he leans heavily on the
handles, still standing on the same spot; this lifts
the plough, so that it turns easily as if on a pivot.

Then the oxen "jack round"— that is, walk round
— so as to face downhill, the framework in front
turning like the fore-wheels of a carriage. So soon
as they face downhill and the plough is turned, they
commence work and make the second furrow side by
side with the first. The same operation is repeated
at the bottom, and thus the plough travels straight up
and down, always turning the furrow the same way,
instead of, as in the valleys, making a short circuit at

230 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

each end, and throwing the earth in opposite direc-
tions. The result is a perfectly level field, which,
though not designed for it, must suit the reaping
machine better than the drain furrows and raised
" lands " of the valley system.

It is somewhat curious that the steam plough, the
most remarkable application of machinery to agricul-
ture, in this respect resembles the village-made wheel
plough. The plough drawn by steam power in like
manner turns the second furrow side by side into the
first, always throwing the earth the same way, and
leaving the ground level. This is one of its defects
on heavy wet land, as it does not drain the surface.
But upon the slopes of the Downs no drains or raised
" lands " are needed, and the wheel plough answers
perfectly.

So perfectly, indeed, does it answer that no iron
plough has yet been invented that can beat it, and
while the valleys and plains are now almost wholly
worked with factory-made ploughs, the South Downs
are cultivated with the ploughs made in the villages
by the wheelwrights. A wheelwright is generally
regularly employed by two or three farms, which
keep him in constant work. There is not, perhaps,
another home-made implement of old English agricul-
ture left in use ; certainly, none at once so curious and
interesting, and, when drawn by oxen, so thoroughly
characteristic.

Under the September sun, flowers may still be
found in sheltered places, as at the side of furze,
on the highest of the Downs. Wild thyme continues
to bloom — the shepherd's thyme — wild mignonette,

THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD. 231

blue scabious, white dropwort, yellow bedstraw, and
the large purple blooms of greater knapweed. Here
and there a blue field gentian is still in flower ; ' ' eggs
and bacon " grow beside the waggon tracks. Grass-
hoppers hop among the short dry grass ; bees and
bumblebees are buzzing about, and there are places
quite bright with yellow hawkweeds.

The furze is everywhere full of finches, troops of
them ; and there are many more swallows than were
flying here a month since. No doubt, they are on
their way southwards, and stay, as it were, on the
edge of the sea while yet the sun shines. As the
evening falls the sheep come slowly home to the fold.
When the flock is penned some stand panting, and
the whole body at each pant moves to and fro length-
ways; some press against the flakes till the wood
creaks ; some paw the dry and crumbling ground
(arable), making a hollow in which to lie down.

Books are fond of the places where sheep have been
folded, and perhaps that is one of the causes why they
so continually visit certain spots in particular fields
to the neglect of the rest.

232 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD.

THE waves coming round the promontory before the
west wind still give the idea of a flowing stream, as
they did in Homer's days. Here beneath the cliff,
standing where beach and sand meet, it is still ; the
wind passes six hundred feet overhead. But yonder,
every larger wave rolling before the breeze breaks
over the rocks; a white line of spray rushes along
them, gleaming in the sunshine ; for a moment the
dark rock-wall disappears, till the spray sinks.

The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand,
its surface on a higher level — raised like a green
mound — as if it could burst in and occupy the space
up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not
do so, I know ; but there is an infinite possibility
about the sea ; it may do what it is not recorded to
have done. It is not to be ordered, it may overleap
the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It
has a potency unfathomable. There is still something
in it not quite grasped and understood — something
still to be discovered — a mystery.

So the white spray rushes along the low broken
wall of rocks, the sun gleams on the flying fragments
of the wave, again it sinks, and the rhythmic motion

THE BEEEZE ON BE ACHY HEAD.' 233

holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the
tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something
may drift up from the unknown, a large belief in the
unseen resources of the endless space out yonder,
soothes the mind with dreamy hope.

The little rules and little experiences, all the petty
ways of narrow life, are shut off behind by the
ponderous and impassable cliff ; as if we had dwelt in
the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look
at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the
entrance, so that there was no return to the shadow.
The impassable precipice shuts off our former selves
of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea only,
or up to the deeper heaven.

These breadths draw out the soul ; we feel that we
have wider thoughts than we knew ; the soul has been
living, as it were, in a nutshell, all unaware of its own
power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun
and the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to
beach, the cliff shuts off the human world, for the sea
knows no time and no era ; you cannot tell what
century it is from the face of the sea. A Eoman
trireme suddenly rounding the white edge-line of chalk,
borne on wind and oar from the Isle of Wight towards
the gray castle at Pevensey (already old in olden
days), would not seem strange. What wonder could
surprise us coming from the wonderful sea ?

The little rills winding through the sand have made
an islet of a detached rock by the beach ; limpets
cover it, adhering like rivet-heads. In the stillness
here, under the roof of the wind so high above, the
sound of the sand draining itself is audible. From

234 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

the cliff blocks of clialk have fallen, leaving hollows
as when a knot drops from a beam. They lie crushed
together at the base, and on the point of this jagged
ridge a wheatear perches.

There are ledges three hundred feet above, and from
these now and then*a jackdaw glides out and returns
again to his place, where, when still and with folded
wings, he is but a speck of black. A spire of chalk
still higher stands out from the wall, but the rains
have got behind it and will cut the crevice deeper and
deeper into its foundation. Water, too, has carried
the soil from under the turf at the summit over the
verge, forming brown streaks.

Upon the beach lies a piece of timber, part of a
wreck ; the wood is torn and the fibres rent where it
was battered against the dull edge of the rocks. The
heat of the sun burns, thrown back by the dazzling
chalk ; the river of ocean flows ceaselessly, casting
the spray over the stones ; the unchanged sky is blue.

Let us go back and mount the steps at the Gap,
and rest on the sward there. I feel that I want the
presence of grass. The sky is a softer blue, and the
sun genial now the eye and the mind alike are
relieved — the one of the strain of too great solitude
(not the solitude of the woods), the other of too
brilliant and hard a contrast of colours. Touch but
the grass, and the harmony returns ; it is repose after
exaltation.

A vessel comes round the promontory; it is not
a trireme of old Eome, nor the "fair and stately
galley" Count Arnaldus hailed with its seamen
singing the mystery of the sea. It is but a brig in

THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD. 235

ballast, high out of the water, black of hull and dingy
of sail : still, it is a ship, and there is always an
interest about a ship. She is so near, running along
but just outside the reef, that the deck is visible.
Up rises her stern as the billows come fast and roll
under ; then her bow lifts, and immediately she rolls,
and, loosely swaying with the sea, drives along.

The slope of the billow now behind her is white
with the bubbles of her passage, rising, too, from her
rudder. Steering athwart with a widening angle
from the land, she is laid to clear the distant point of
Dungeness. Next, a steamer glides forth, unseen till
she passed the cliff ; and thus each vessel that comes
from the westward has the charm of the unexpected.
Eastward there is many a sail working slowly into
the wind, and as they approach talking in the
language of flags with the watch on the summit of
the Head.

Once now and then the great Orient pauses on her
outward route to Australia, slowing her engines : the
immense length of her hull contains every adjunct of
modern life ; science, skill, and civilization are there.
She starts, and is lost sight of round the cliff, gone
straight away for the very ends of the world. The
incident is forgotten, when one morning, as you turn
over the newspaper, there is the Orient announced to
start again. It is like a tale of enchantment ; it
seems but yesterday that the Head hid her from view ;
you have scarcely moved, attending to the daily
routine of life, and scarce recognize that time has
passed at all. In so few hours has the earth been
encompassed.

236 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

The sea-gulls as they settle on the surface ride high
out of the water, like the mediaeval caravals, with
their sterns almost as tall as the masts. Their un-
concerned flight, with crooked wings unbent, as if it
were no matter to them whether they flew or floated,
in its peculiar jerking motion somewhat reminds one
of the lapwing — the heron has it, too, a little — as if
aquatic or water-side birds had a common and distinct
action of the wing.

Sometimes a porpoise comes along, but just beyond
the reef ; looking down on him from the verge of the
cliff, his course can be watched. His dark body, wet
and oily, appears on the surface for two seconds;
and then, throwing up his tail like the fluke of an
anchor, down he goes. Now look forward, along the
waves, some fifty yards or so, and he will come up,
the sunshine gleaming on the water as it runs off his
back, to again dive, and reappear after a similar
interval. Even when the eye can no longer distinguish
the form, the spot where he rises is visible, from the
slight change in the surface.

The hill receding in hollows leaves a narrow plain
between the foot of the sward and the cliff; it is
ploughed, and the teams come to the footpath which
follows the edge ; and thus those who plough the sea
and those who plough the land look upon each other.
The one sees the vessel change her tack, the other
notes the plough turning at the end of the furrow.
Bramble bushes project over the dangerous wall of
chalk, and grasses fill up the interstices, a hedge
suspended in air; but be careful not to reach too
far for the blackberries.

THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD. 237

The green sea is on the one hand, the yellow stubble
on the other. The porpoise dives along beneath,
the sheep graze above. Green seaweed lines the reef
over which the white spray flies, blue lucerne dots the
field. The pebbles of the beach seen from the height
mingle in a faint blue tint, as if the distance ground
them into coloured sand. Leaving the footpath now,
and crossing the stubble to " France," as the wide
open hollow in the down is called by the shepherds,
it is no easy matter in dry summer weather to climb
the steep turf to the furze line above.

Dry grass is as slippery as if it were hair, and the
sheep have fed it too close for a grip of the hand.
Under the furze (still far from the summit) they have
worn a path — a narrow ledge, cut by their cloven feet
— through the sward. It is time to rest ; and already,
looking back, the sea has extended to an indefinite
horizon. This climb of a few hundred feet opens a
view of so many miles more. But the ships lose their
individuality and human character ; they are so far,
so very far, away, they do not take hold of the
sympathies ; they seem like sketches — cunningly
executed, but only sketches — on the immense canvas
of the ocean. There is something unreal about them.
On a calm day, when the surface is smooth as if
the brimming ocean had been straked — the rod passed
across the top of the measure, thrusting off the
irregularities of wave; when the distant green from
long simmering under the sun becomes pale ; when
the sky, without cloud, but with some slight haze in
it, likewise loses its hue, and the two so commingle
in the pallor of heat that they cannot be separated —

238 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

then the still ships appear suspended in space. They
are as much held from ahove as upborne from
beneath.

They are motionless, midway in space — whether it
is sea or air is not to be known. They neither float
nor fly, they are suspended. There is no force in the
flat sail, the mast is lifeless, the hull without impetus.
For hours they linger, changeless as the constellations,
still, silent, motionless, phantom vessels on a void sea.

Another climb up from the sheep path, and it is
not far then to the terrible edge of that tremendous
cliff which rises straighter than a ship's side out of
the sea, six hundred feet above the detached rock
below, where the limpets cling like rivet heads, and
the sand rills run around it. But it is not possible to
look down to it — the glance of necessity falls outwards,
as a raindrop from the eaves is deflected by the wind,
because it is the edge where the mould crumbles ; the
rootlets of the grass are exposed ; the chalk is about
to break away in flakes.

You cannot lean over as over a parapet, lest such
a flake should detach itself — lest a mere trifle should
begin to fall, awakening a dread and dormant inclina-
tion to slide and finally plunge like it. Stand back ;
the sea there goes out and out, to the left and to the
right, and how far is it to the blue overhead ? The
eye must stay here a long period, and drink in these
distances, before it can adjust the measure, and know
exactly what it sees.

The vastness conceals itself, giving us no landmark
or milestone. The fleck of cloud yonder, does it part
it in two, or is it but a third of the way ? The world

THE BREEZE ON BEACH? HEAD. 239

is an immense cauldron, the ocean fills it, and we are
merely on the rim — this narrow land is but a ribbon
to the limitlessness yonder. The wind rushes out
upon it with wild joy ; springing from the edge of the
earth, it leaps out over the ocean. Let us go back
a few steps and recline on the warm, dry turf.

It is pleasant to look back upon the green slope
and the hollows and narrow ridges, with sheep and
stubble and some low hedges, and oxen, and that old,
old sloth — the plough — creeping in his path. The
sun is bright on the stubble and the corners of furze ;
there are bees humming yonder, no doubt, and flowers,
and hares crouching — the dew dried from around them
long since, and waiting for it to fall again ; partridges,
too, corn-ricks, and the roof of a farmhouse by them.
Lit with sunlight are the fields, warm autumn garner-
ing all that is dear to the heart of man, blue heaven
above — how sweet the wind conies from these ! — the
sweeter for the knowledge of the profound abyss
behind.

Here, reclining on the grass — the verge of the cliff
rising a little, shuts out the actual sea — the glance
goes forth into the hollow unsupported. It is sweeter
towards the corn-ricks, and yet the mind will not be
satisfied, but ever turns to the unknown. The edge
and the abyss recall us ; the boundless plain, for it
appears solid as the waves are levelled by distance,
demands the gaze. But with use it becomes easier,
and the eye labours less. There is a promontory
standing out from the main wall, whence you can see
the side of the cliff, getting a flank view, as from a
tower.

240 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

The jackdaws occasionally floating out from the
ledge are as mere specks from above, as they were
from below. The reef running out from the beach,
though now covered by the tide, is visible as you look
down on it through the water ; the seaweed, which lay
matted and half dry on the rocks, is now under the
wave. Boats have come round, and are beached;
how helplessly little they seem beneath the cliff by
the sea !

On returning homewards towards Eastbourne stay
awhile by the tumulus on the slope. There are
others hidden among the furze; butterflies flutter
over them, and the bees hum round by day; by
night the night-hawk passes, coming up from the
fields and even skirting the sheds and houses below.
The rains beat on them, and the storm drives the dead
leaves over their low green domes; the waves boom
on the shore far down.

How many times has the morning star shone
yonder in the East ? All the mystery of the sun and
of the stars centres around these lowly mounds.

But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze.
The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is
pure and pleasant ; but the least climb, even a
hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmo-
sphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-
tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from
the south, the waves refine it ; if inland, the wheat and
flowers and grass distil it. The great headland and
the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and
washed with air; the billows of the atmosphere roll
over it.

THE BREEZE ON BEACHY HEAD. 241

The sun searches out every crevice amongst the
grass, nor is there the smallest fragment of surface
which is not sweetened by air and light. Under-
neath, the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus
washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented,
is a couch prepared with thyme to rest on. Dis-
cover some excuse to be up there always, to search for
stray mushrooms — they will be stray, for the crop is
gathered extremely early in the morning — or to make
a list of flowers and grasses ; to do anything, and, if
not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold
have been found, and lands of spices and precious
merchandise ; but this is the land of health.

There is the sea below to bathe in, the air of the
sky up hither to breathe, the sun to infuse the in-
visible magnetism of his beams. These are the three
potent medicines of nature, and they are medicines
that by degrees strengthen not only the body but the
unquiet mind. It is not necessary to always look out
over the sea. By strolling along the slopes of the
ridge a little way inland there is another scene where
hills roll on after hills till the last and largest hides
those that succeed behind it.

Vast- cloud-shadows darken one,, and lift their veil
from another ; like the sea, their tint varies with the
hue of the sky over them. Deep narrow valleys —
lanes in the hills — draw the footsteps downwards into
their solitude, but there is always the delicious air,
turn whither you will, and there is always the grass,
the touch of which refreshes. Though not in sight, it
is pleasant to know that the sea is close at hand, and
that you have only to mount to the ridge to view it.

242 NATURE NEAR LONDON.

At sunset the curves of the shore westward are filled
with a luminous mist.

Or if it should be calm, and you should like to look
at the massive headland from the level of the sea, row
out a mile from the beach. Eastwards a bank of red
vapour shuts in the sea, the wavelets — no larger than
those raised by the oar — on that side are purple as if
wine had been spilt upon them, but westwards the
ripples shimmer with palest gold.

The sun sinks behind the summit of the Downs,
and slender streaks of purple are drawn along above
them. A shadow comes forth from the cliff ; a duski-
ness dwells on the water ; something tempts the eye
upwards, and near the zenith there is a star.

THE END.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, L1MITKP, LONDON AND BECCLES.

[March, 1883.

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